Get Rich Quick Scheme #1 was the paper route, by the way.
When I was in middle school or so, my mother stumbled across another get rich quick scheme. I don't know where she found it -- the mail maybe? -- but it involved mailing two dollars each to a long list of people. If I recall correctly, she requested a second list because she wanted to earn double the money. I remember my mother sank over $500 in postage and envelopes stuffed
with two dollars a piece. It seemed like a massive sum of money to me
back then, and I questioned how she could possibly recoup her costs.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked. "What is this supposed to do?" She claimed she would receive $2 each from even more people, and it would be like winning the lottery. What were they paying for? What were they being paid to do? It sounded fishy to me. And nonsensical. If someone mailed me $2 and some instructions, I'd put the money in my wallet and throw the instructions away (those charities that mail people nickels and address labels must hate me). My dad explained that it was a pyramid scheme. This was my introduction to pyramid schemes. My primary takeaways at the time were that it was a scam and that only the people at the top of the pyramid would make money. Everyone who joined later -- like my mom -- was going to lose their money. We had this conversation in front of my mother, but she did it anyway. She was sure she was going to be rich.
Ultimately my mother received one envelope with $2 inside. She argued that the net loss was actually less because several of the envelopes were eventually returned to sender.
Showing posts with label job. Show all posts
Showing posts with label job. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Breaking Up with My Mother
Near the end of our relationship -- just before the several months of silence that preceded my wedding -- my mother left me some rather fucked up voicemails. I've mentioned them here before. Sometimes I would come home from work to a happy morning voicemail chattering away about wedding cakes and an angry afternoon voicemail calling me an ungrateful little bitch. Sometimes there were more than two. I still have them. Almost all of them. My voicemail at the time was set up to send mp3 files to my gmail account, and I didn't delete them. I starred the most fucked up ones so I could find them later if I needed to build a case against her or I guess just feel sorry for myself in a masochistic sort of way.
I listened to two of her starred voicemails the other day for the first time in at least five years. I'm not entirely sure why, though I have wanted to post them here for a long time. I've run across them before in my email, but I have avoided them until recently because I anticipated they would make me feel bad or start shaking like I used to whenever I heard her voice. It was the first time I've heard her voice in at least five years. I didn't start shaking, so that was good. I didn't cry either, which is also good. They were a lot meaner than I remembered. Pretty much every time I run across an old email or story about her, I'm surprised again by how much worse it was than I remembered.
In both the voicemails I listened to, she said something along the lines of, "Answer me this one question and I'll leave you alone forever. What did I ever do to deserve the way you treat me?" That might not be verbatim, but I don't want to listen to them again to check. Take my word for it that it's close enough. And the answer to her question is that she did very little to deserve the way I treated her. I was kind to her. I tried to help her and make her happy. Bear in mind that these voicemails were before I ever cut ties with her, when I tripped over myself trying to save both my parents at the expense of most other things in my life. Most people would have considered me a good daughter, or at least that's what they say out loud. She didn't deserve the way I treated her. She didn't have to because she was my mother and I loved her and felt responsible for her.
After I got married and my mother stopped contacting me again and my dad made his threat to let himself die of infection rather than live in a nursing home, my husband I moved. That was when we bought our house so that my dad could move in with us. My mother hadn't reached out to me in the ten months following my wedding, and I didn't reach out to tell her I was moving.
I didn't hear from her again for three years, when she finally found me on Facebook. She sent me this message:
My first reaction was shock. Not at the content so much as the fact that it was her. Sort of like how I used to start shaking whenever the phone rang. Flushed face, pounding heart. I'm not sure if it was more fear or excitement. I find them hard to tell apart.
I didn't know what to say. I wanted to tell her good job. I wanted to praise her for getting help, even if the help she was getting was not by choice. I knew from my dad that she had only ended up at Butterfly Glen because of another "suicide attempt" after both her parents died and she was going to have to find someone new to take her in and take care of her. No one retrieved her from the hospital's psych ward, so she had been released to Butterfly Glen, an assisted living home I presume she selected from a short list based on its name. She has always loved butterflies. Butterfly everything. Also, it's a shithole -- I've looked online.
The problem with responding to her was that I didn't want to renew contact. It felt like an abusive ex with a drug abuse problem was reaching out to say she'd gotten clean and was ready to be together again. Why? I'm fine now and it was so hard to break up -- why would I ever walk back into that? I want her to be happy and healthy, but what I don't want her to be is my problem. I reached out to my best friend, Jerry. I explained that I didn't want to have to deal to my mother again but that I felt I owed it to her until the next time she went off the deep end. "Don't respond for three weeks, and I bet she'll comply," Jerry said. Jerry knows my mom.
The fact of the matter is that I don't know if my mother was still abusing prescription drugs at Butterfly Glen. I have no idea how much of what she was on or how diligent her doctors were. I thought back to how she'd been before the muscle relaxants and the sleeping pills and god knows what else. Back when I was thirteen and younger. Her behavior wouldn't have been mistaken for bipolar disorder back then, before the drugs. And that's when I started remembering some of the stories I've told here, and I realized I still wouldn't want her in my life. No version of the mother I've ever known would be someone I would choose to have in my life. Life is easier without her.
I explained to my therapist, "The more I think about my childhood, the more the good memories are colored by the things I know now. It seems like the love I felt for my mother was mostly Stockholm Syndrome."
She replied, "Maybe it was." I didn't expect that response.
I didn't reply to my mother's Facebook message. She sent me another a few months later on my birthday, but I didn't see it until even later because it was in my "other" inbox, where unsolicited messages from strangers go. She wrote:
I was pregnant with Eliza at the time. I never replied.
I listened to two of her starred voicemails the other day for the first time in at least five years. I'm not entirely sure why, though I have wanted to post them here for a long time. I've run across them before in my email, but I have avoided them until recently because I anticipated they would make me feel bad or start shaking like I used to whenever I heard her voice. It was the first time I've heard her voice in at least five years. I didn't start shaking, so that was good. I didn't cry either, which is also good. They were a lot meaner than I remembered. Pretty much every time I run across an old email or story about her, I'm surprised again by how much worse it was than I remembered.
In both the voicemails I listened to, she said something along the lines of, "Answer me this one question and I'll leave you alone forever. What did I ever do to deserve the way you treat me?" That might not be verbatim, but I don't want to listen to them again to check. Take my word for it that it's close enough. And the answer to her question is that she did very little to deserve the way I treated her. I was kind to her. I tried to help her and make her happy. Bear in mind that these voicemails were before I ever cut ties with her, when I tripped over myself trying to save both my parents at the expense of most other things in my life. Most people would have considered me a good daughter, or at least that's what they say out loud. She didn't deserve the way I treated her. She didn't have to because she was my mother and I loved her and felt responsible for her.
After I got married and my mother stopped contacting me again and my dad made his threat to let himself die of infection rather than live in a nursing home, my husband I moved. That was when we bought our house so that my dad could move in with us. My mother hadn't reached out to me in the ten months following my wedding, and I didn't reach out to tell her I was moving.
I didn't hear from her again for three years, when she finally found me on Facebook. She sent me this message:
I miss you, I love you. I sent you an anniversary card but it came back. Just wanted you to know I am getting the help I need and would love to be in contact with you again. I am living in a group home called Butterfly Glen and it helps. My address is 12986 Appleton St Cincinnati, OH and my phone number is 513-555-9876. I would love to hear from you. I was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and am being treated for it. I feel much better. Love forever and always, Mom
My first reaction was shock. Not at the content so much as the fact that it was her. Sort of like how I used to start shaking whenever the phone rang. Flushed face, pounding heart. I'm not sure if it was more fear or excitement. I find them hard to tell apart.
I didn't know what to say. I wanted to tell her good job. I wanted to praise her for getting help, even if the help she was getting was not by choice. I knew from my dad that she had only ended up at Butterfly Glen because of another "suicide attempt" after both her parents died and she was going to have to find someone new to take her in and take care of her. No one retrieved her from the hospital's psych ward, so she had been released to Butterfly Glen, an assisted living home I presume she selected from a short list based on its name. She has always loved butterflies. Butterfly everything. Also, it's a shithole -- I've looked online.
The problem with responding to her was that I didn't want to renew contact. It felt like an abusive ex with a drug abuse problem was reaching out to say she'd gotten clean and was ready to be together again. Why? I'm fine now and it was so hard to break up -- why would I ever walk back into that? I want her to be happy and healthy, but what I don't want her to be is my problem. I reached out to my best friend, Jerry. I explained that I didn't want to have to deal to my mother again but that I felt I owed it to her until the next time she went off the deep end. "Don't respond for three weeks, and I bet she'll comply," Jerry said. Jerry knows my mom.
The fact of the matter is that I don't know if my mother was still abusing prescription drugs at Butterfly Glen. I have no idea how much of what she was on or how diligent her doctors were. I thought back to how she'd been before the muscle relaxants and the sleeping pills and god knows what else. Back when I was thirteen and younger. Her behavior wouldn't have been mistaken for bipolar disorder back then, before the drugs. And that's when I started remembering some of the stories I've told here, and I realized I still wouldn't want her in my life. No version of the mother I've ever known would be someone I would choose to have in my life. Life is easier without her.
I explained to my therapist, "The more I think about my childhood, the more the good memories are colored by the things I know now. It seems like the love I felt for my mother was mostly Stockholm Syndrome."
She replied, "Maybe it was." I didn't expect that response.
I didn't reply to my mother's Facebook message. She sent me another a few months later on my birthday, but I didn't see it until even later because it was in my "other" inbox, where unsolicited messages from strangers go. She wrote:
Happy Happy Birthday!!! I can't believe that 30 years ago today you came into my life and changed it forever. I wanted to update you on family events. I'm sure that Dad told you that Grandma Wilkes died in May after your wedding. Uncle Jim died last November and Grandpa Wilkes died on August 4th this year. All I have left is Dante and you and Michael. I'm living in a great group home called Butterfly Glen I am being treated with medication and group therapy for Bipolar disorder. I am doing great and the only thing that could be better would be to hear from you. I don't want anything from you just to hear from you and to know where you are and what you're doing and how you are doing. Love Forever and Always, MOM
I was pregnant with Eliza at the time. I never replied.
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Another Email
For the record, I was grossing $30k per annum in 2007. I don't even know off hand what the mysterious $2k referenced below was all about. It might have been something extra my dad had me transfer over when their account was empty, intended to cover the household bills that were on autopay (which was most of them). I know that was a thing that happened at one point.
From: Christina R. Martin <christina.r.martin@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, May 4, 2007 at 2:07 PM
Subject:
To: Paul Rossetti <stargazer23401@aol.com>
Hi Dad, I returned Mom's calls today. She told me she already spent the $2000 that she discovered in the bank yesterday and then said she had come to me to solve her money problems. I told her I didn't know what she should do, and she accused me of not caring. When I told her I care but that I didn't have a solution, she got mad at me for not immediately offering her money -- apparently the solution to her money problems is supposed to be me. She claims I have "money coming out [my] ass" and that Dante is better than me because, despite the fact that he is getting evicted from his apartment and losing his electricity, "he cares." She said, "You make good money, dontcha?" I told her I don't make nearly as much as she does, and she said, "I don't have any money!" She started to yell some more, so I told her I had to go and I hung up. She makes me very sad.
Love, Chrissy
From: Christina R. Martin <christina.r.martin@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, May 4, 2007 at 2:07 PM
Subject:
To: Paul Rossetti <stargazer23401@aol.com>
Hi Dad, I returned Mom's calls today. She told me she already spent the $2000 that she discovered in the bank yesterday and then said she had come to me to solve her money problems. I told her I didn't know what she should do, and she accused me of not caring. When I told her I care but that I didn't have a solution, she got mad at me for not immediately offering her money -- apparently the solution to her money problems is supposed to be me. She claims I have "money coming out [my] ass" and that Dante is better than me because, despite the fact that he is getting evicted from his apartment and losing his electricity, "he cares." She said, "You make good money, dontcha?" I told her I don't make nearly as much as she does, and she said, "I don't have any money!" She started to yell some more, so I told her I had to go and I hung up. She makes me very sad.
Love, Chrissy
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
My Mom... Again: An Email
This one is from January 2007, the year before I cut ties with my mother. My parents were mid-divorce, my dad was back in the hospital, and my mother had come out of her lengthy bout of not eating or moving or bathing to refinance the mortgage on the house and become worse than ever before.
When my mother refinanced the mortgage, the monthly payments increased by about 50% (until the first rate adjustment, when it increased by about another 20%) and the mortgage reset for another 30 years of payments. In exchange for this deal, my mother would receive $40k cash (as referenced in A List of Mom's Antics While Dad's in Hospital). In order to ensure my dad's compliance since she needed his signature on the refinance paperwork, she promised him half the money. I honestly think he would have signed no matter what because he tended to do whatever she demanded and then throw his hands in the air and claim he had no choice, but whatever.
When she spent her half inside three weeks, my dad moved his $20k from my parents' joint account to the new joint account I had opened with him so that my mother couldn't spend it too. That's the $20k referenced below. Since she didn't appear to monitor her bank account back then (or ever?) and simply spent until it was empty, I hadn't expected her to notice. Seriously. It normally went from five figures to empty in a matter of days anyway. It might seem odd to a third party that I didn't try explaining to her, "You promised that half of the money to Dad," but knowing me and knowing her, it wasn't odd. It wouldn't have lessened the yelling or the retribution, and my primary wish back then was to stop getting yelled at. In my family, telling the truth tended to go badly. Lying was easier and more effective. I just wish I'd learned that fact before my twenties.
It gets a little dark at the end.
Dear Jerry,
I think I mentioned the last time we spoke that my mother had started calling again. I've found the best way to get through her tirades without dissolving is to put her on speaker phone and watch the amused reactions of Michael and anyone else who happens to be in the apartment at the time. They reinforce that she is crazy, which means that I am, by default, sane, and this is always a reassuring thing to find out.
Today was the worst since the "day of inappropriate voice mails left in irrational anger." First off, the bank sent a letter to my dad confirming that he had transferred $20k to our new joint bank account. Of course, my mother opened it and read it, as she does with every piece of mail that enters the house, regardless of to whom it is addressed. The only thing I could tell my mother was that he had wanted to send me money for the wedding. I had planned out the entire story in minute detail beforehand -- explaining that the money was for my wedding, which she had told me she'd pay for and clearly would not be able to, was the only way she would consider it a lost cause and not try to recoup it later. Now she is under the impression that my father just gave me a $20k gift and she is trying to convince my brother, who is holding my dad's favorite guitars for him so that my mom cannot sell them, that my dad only cares about me and clearly does not love him. I had to relay these new developments to my dad so that he could try to explain things to Dante as best as he can without having to trust him with too much information. Luckily, my mother's interest in anything I have to say wanes the second I open my mouth, so I mostly looked like a spoiled daughter who has no idea what is going on in her finances.
My mom then asked why I ignored everyone at Christmas. I think she was referring to the fact that I didn't send her a present. Neither of us mentioned the fact that no one in the entire family contacted me at Christmas, either by mail or by phone. She probably didn't think they needed to; I just didn't mention it because I didn't want to get involved in the fight she was trying to have with me. I had meant to send everyone cookies like I did last year, but by the time I had enough time to bake them all, none of them would have gotten to their destinations in time. I explained that I didn't call her because I didn't want to get yelled at. I can't think of a nicer way to say it, so that's how I say it. I have told her this before, but apparently I should know that I deserve to be yelled at and I should stop trying to avoid my punishments.
The part I remember best was when she told me that I should buy cards for everyone and treat my elders with respect (I guess this was a reference to the fact that my grandparents and I don't write to each other anymore -- she used to get angry when we did because I wasn't writing to her) and that I'm 25 years old and "need to grow up." I'm already planning to use that line on her the next time she cries about not having enough money to care for herself. "You are 56 years old, you have never had to work for a living, you can't manage to take care of yourself when handed $6000 per month, and you blame all your problems on everyone but yourself -- it's time to grow up," I'll say. "I shouldn't be the one to tell you that you have to learn to take responsibility for yourself, but since you've alienated everyone else you know, it seems I'm the only one who will." That might be a little too preachy. Maybe just, "Stop whining! Take responsibility for yourself!" or "Good god, I'd like to set you on fire!" That would be the most frank.
I hate her so much. I hate myself so much. Her calls just make both worse. I've never been good at taking these things in stride. I try to act stoic, and I'm trying to be strong for my dad, but I hate her so much. Every time I hear from her I feel more useless and hopeless than before. I'm a bad person and everyone in her family apparently thinks I'm a deserter and a "selfish little bitch," and if my genes come from her, what if I get more like her? What if I have children and ruin my marriage and their lives? What if they hate me as much as I hate her? Part of me is totally fine and hopeful and wants to see the world and do big things, but the part that she talks to just wants to kill myself. My logic is that, even though she'd still hate me for doing something so self-centered, I wouldn't be able to do anything to make the situation worse.
I'm sick of things being my fault, and if I'm dead, I can't be blamed, can I? Not logically anyway. I don't think too much anymore about all the stuff I'd need to put in order beforehand -- since she wouldn't be the one going through my things, what do I care if I haven't destroyed everything I ever wrote? -- though I would want some sort of will in place for the money in my bank accounts. I've done a little research but the internet isn't terribly helpful. I don't know what to do. If I died, I think it would kill my dad, but I don't know what to do. If I someday decided this is what I want, I don't know if anyone would support me, and I'm not sure of the legal ramifications if Michael knew in advance. I don't know what to do. I'm sorry if this sounds stupid or silly. I don't make rash decisions, so it won't happen tonight, but I've been thinking about it for awhile now, and I think I might do less damage in the long run this way.
I hope you had a good trip to New Orleans. Did you do anything fun? Sorry for the long, depressing email. -- C
When my mother refinanced the mortgage, the monthly payments increased by about 50% (until the first rate adjustment, when it increased by about another 20%) and the mortgage reset for another 30 years of payments. In exchange for this deal, my mother would receive $40k cash (as referenced in A List of Mom's Antics While Dad's in Hospital). In order to ensure my dad's compliance since she needed his signature on the refinance paperwork, she promised him half the money. I honestly think he would have signed no matter what because he tended to do whatever she demanded and then throw his hands in the air and claim he had no choice, but whatever.
When she spent her half inside three weeks, my dad moved his $20k from my parents' joint account to the new joint account I had opened with him so that my mother couldn't spend it too. That's the $20k referenced below. Since she didn't appear to monitor her bank account back then (or ever?) and simply spent until it was empty, I hadn't expected her to notice. Seriously. It normally went from five figures to empty in a matter of days anyway. It might seem odd to a third party that I didn't try explaining to her, "You promised that half of the money to Dad," but knowing me and knowing her, it wasn't odd. It wouldn't have lessened the yelling or the retribution, and my primary wish back then was to stop getting yelled at. In my family, telling the truth tended to go badly. Lying was easier and more effective. I just wish I'd learned that fact before my twenties.
It gets a little dark at the end.
Dear Jerry,
I think I mentioned the last time we spoke that my mother had started calling again. I've found the best way to get through her tirades without dissolving is to put her on speaker phone and watch the amused reactions of Michael and anyone else who happens to be in the apartment at the time. They reinforce that she is crazy, which means that I am, by default, sane, and this is always a reassuring thing to find out.
Today was the worst since the "day of inappropriate voice mails left in irrational anger." First off, the bank sent a letter to my dad confirming that he had transferred $20k to our new joint bank account. Of course, my mother opened it and read it, as she does with every piece of mail that enters the house, regardless of to whom it is addressed. The only thing I could tell my mother was that he had wanted to send me money for the wedding. I had planned out the entire story in minute detail beforehand -- explaining that the money was for my wedding, which she had told me she'd pay for and clearly would not be able to, was the only way she would consider it a lost cause and not try to recoup it later. Now she is under the impression that my father just gave me a $20k gift and she is trying to convince my brother, who is holding my dad's favorite guitars for him so that my mom cannot sell them, that my dad only cares about me and clearly does not love him. I had to relay these new developments to my dad so that he could try to explain things to Dante as best as he can without having to trust him with too much information. Luckily, my mother's interest in anything I have to say wanes the second I open my mouth, so I mostly looked like a spoiled daughter who has no idea what is going on in her finances.
My mom then asked why I ignored everyone at Christmas. I think she was referring to the fact that I didn't send her a present. Neither of us mentioned the fact that no one in the entire family contacted me at Christmas, either by mail or by phone. She probably didn't think they needed to; I just didn't mention it because I didn't want to get involved in the fight she was trying to have with me. I had meant to send everyone cookies like I did last year, but by the time I had enough time to bake them all, none of them would have gotten to their destinations in time. I explained that I didn't call her because I didn't want to get yelled at. I can't think of a nicer way to say it, so that's how I say it. I have told her this before, but apparently I should know that I deserve to be yelled at and I should stop trying to avoid my punishments.
The part I remember best was when she told me that I should buy cards for everyone and treat my elders with respect (I guess this was a reference to the fact that my grandparents and I don't write to each other anymore -- she used to get angry when we did because I wasn't writing to her) and that I'm 25 years old and "need to grow up." I'm already planning to use that line on her the next time she cries about not having enough money to care for herself. "You are 56 years old, you have never had to work for a living, you can't manage to take care of yourself when handed $6000 per month, and you blame all your problems on everyone but yourself -- it's time to grow up," I'll say. "I shouldn't be the one to tell you that you have to learn to take responsibility for yourself, but since you've alienated everyone else you know, it seems I'm the only one who will." That might be a little too preachy. Maybe just, "Stop whining! Take responsibility for yourself!" or "Good god, I'd like to set you on fire!" That would be the most frank.
I hate her so much. I hate myself so much. Her calls just make both worse. I've never been good at taking these things in stride. I try to act stoic, and I'm trying to be strong for my dad, but I hate her so much. Every time I hear from her I feel more useless and hopeless than before. I'm a bad person and everyone in her family apparently thinks I'm a deserter and a "selfish little bitch," and if my genes come from her, what if I get more like her? What if I have children and ruin my marriage and their lives? What if they hate me as much as I hate her? Part of me is totally fine and hopeful and wants to see the world and do big things, but the part that she talks to just wants to kill myself. My logic is that, even though she'd still hate me for doing something so self-centered, I wouldn't be able to do anything to make the situation worse.
I'm sick of things being my fault, and if I'm dead, I can't be blamed, can I? Not logically anyway. I don't think too much anymore about all the stuff I'd need to put in order beforehand -- since she wouldn't be the one going through my things, what do I care if I haven't destroyed everything I ever wrote? -- though I would want some sort of will in place for the money in my bank accounts. I've done a little research but the internet isn't terribly helpful. I don't know what to do. If I died, I think it would kill my dad, but I don't know what to do. If I someday decided this is what I want, I don't know if anyone would support me, and I'm not sure of the legal ramifications if Michael knew in advance. I don't know what to do. I'm sorry if this sounds stupid or silly. I don't make rash decisions, so it won't happen tonight, but I've been thinking about it for awhile now, and I think I might do less damage in the long run this way.
I hope you had a good trip to New Orleans. Did you do anything fun? Sorry for the long, depressing email. -- C
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Mother Takes Her Cut
At the end of my sophomore year of college, I applied for and accepted a campus job as a Resident Assistant. My payment was a rent-free studio efficiency apartment that would normally cost a little over $10k for the school year. In order to accept the job, I had to quit my mail room job I had worked since freshman year. It had been my sole source of income during the school year.
Because my RA apartment didn't come with a meal plan, I had no way to pay for food. I also had no way to pay for the phone line the school required me to have, or clothes or anything else. My social security checks were still being kept by my mother to pay for my books and tuition. My parents kicked in a lot toward tuition, and I paid for the rest with a hefty academic scholarship and student loans.
After my explanation of the situation -- that she wouldn't have to pay for my housing and could redirect funds toward the things I'd previously paid for with my mail room job -- my mother agreed to give me a monthly allowance so I could buy food and necessities. I believe it was $150 per month, if I recall correctly. I know the budget I worked out allowed me to spend $20 per week on food, so I had to stop buying whole grain healthy stuff and eat a lot more ramen. Unfortunately, that was the same year I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, so I had a lot of doctors bills, and I had to pay bus fare three times per week to get to the hospital for my initial follow-up appointments and some related blood tests.
I called my mother and told her I needed more money to pay hospital bills, and she screamed at me for daring to pay any of them in full. ALWAYS put them on a payment plan, she told me. NEVER pay hospital bills in full! I hadn't known. I asked for payment plans going forward, but I still needed more money. I was barely getting by, and my boss got mad whenever I argued that I didn't have money to eat restaurant food with the other RAs. My boss expected me to pitch in an equal amount whether I ate their food or not. My mother eventually gave me a little more money and purchased me a small supplemental meal plan through the school so that I could eat larger, healthier meals occasionally. Then she spent somewhere in neighborhood of $70 -- more than three weeks' worth of grocery money in my world -- to send me a Hershey's Chocolate Tower of Treats made up almost exclusively of foods my doctors had told me to avoid, such as nuts and popcorn. I had even told her about the diet restrictions before she sent it.
After graduation, after my mother went off the deep end, my dad mentioned the monthly allowance I had lived off of for those last two years of college, except the figure he quoted to me was more than double what I had received. "She told me you hated me," he said. "She said I had to give the money to her because you would never accept it if it came from me directly because you hated me so much." And then she had taken a more than 50% cut for herself. Every single month. I'll let slide the fact that she told my dad I hated him because parental alienation was old hat with her and shouldn't have come as a surprise. But knowing I was struggling, hearing me cry over the phone that I couldn't afford anything and was embarrassing myself in front of my boss, she made the repeated decision to take her cut. Every. Single. Month.
My dad didn't even control their money. He only ever bothered controlling his own comparatively tiny social security checks, which were about 10% of their total monthly income. The rest was all hers. About $9k per month, all hers, at least $6k of which should have been disposable income. I guess she wanted more.
[Edited: I forgot to factor in my tuition and their various car payments -- I don't even remember how many cars they would have been paying off at that time -- when I said they had $6k in monthly disposable income. I was going on what their finances looked like when I took them over a couple years later. I think their mortgage payments were less back then, before the refinance, but I don't know by how much. They might have had as little as $4k disposable income per month. Of course that number also factors in if my mother had paid both the home equity line of credit payment and my tuition rather than paying the HELOC payment every month and then immediately borrowing against it again to pay my tuition, which is what she said she did (in one of her "you are why we're poor" rants). Actually, she said she paid for at least one car with the HELOC too, so that payment wouldn't have been extra. Never mind. I can't even picture what finances looked like when my mother was in charge of them. I've tried before, and that way madness lies.]
Because my RA apartment didn't come with a meal plan, I had no way to pay for food. I also had no way to pay for the phone line the school required me to have, or clothes or anything else. My social security checks were still being kept by my mother to pay for my books and tuition. My parents kicked in a lot toward tuition, and I paid for the rest with a hefty academic scholarship and student loans.
After my explanation of the situation -- that she wouldn't have to pay for my housing and could redirect funds toward the things I'd previously paid for with my mail room job -- my mother agreed to give me a monthly allowance so I could buy food and necessities. I believe it was $150 per month, if I recall correctly. I know the budget I worked out allowed me to spend $20 per week on food, so I had to stop buying whole grain healthy stuff and eat a lot more ramen. Unfortunately, that was the same year I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, so I had a lot of doctors bills, and I had to pay bus fare three times per week to get to the hospital for my initial follow-up appointments and some related blood tests.
I called my mother and told her I needed more money to pay hospital bills, and she screamed at me for daring to pay any of them in full. ALWAYS put them on a payment plan, she told me. NEVER pay hospital bills in full! I hadn't known. I asked for payment plans going forward, but I still needed more money. I was barely getting by, and my boss got mad whenever I argued that I didn't have money to eat restaurant food with the other RAs. My boss expected me to pitch in an equal amount whether I ate their food or not. My mother eventually gave me a little more money and purchased me a small supplemental meal plan through the school so that I could eat larger, healthier meals occasionally. Then she spent somewhere in neighborhood of $70 -- more than three weeks' worth of grocery money in my world -- to send me a Hershey's Chocolate Tower of Treats made up almost exclusively of foods my doctors had told me to avoid, such as nuts and popcorn. I had even told her about the diet restrictions before she sent it.
After graduation, after my mother went off the deep end, my dad mentioned the monthly allowance I had lived off of for those last two years of college, except the figure he quoted to me was more than double what I had received. "She told me you hated me," he said. "She said I had to give the money to her because you would never accept it if it came from me directly because you hated me so much." And then she had taken a more than 50% cut for herself. Every single month. I'll let slide the fact that she told my dad I hated him because parental alienation was old hat with her and shouldn't have come as a surprise. But knowing I was struggling, hearing me cry over the phone that I couldn't afford anything and was embarrassing myself in front of my boss, she made the repeated decision to take her cut. Every. Single. Month.
My dad didn't even control their money. He only ever bothered controlling his own comparatively tiny social security checks, which were about 10% of their total monthly income. The rest was all hers. About $9k per month, all hers, at least $6k of which should have been disposable income. I guess she wanted more.
[Edited: I forgot to factor in my tuition and their various car payments -- I don't even remember how many cars they would have been paying off at that time -- when I said they had $6k in monthly disposable income. I was going on what their finances looked like when I took them over a couple years later. I think their mortgage payments were less back then, before the refinance, but I don't know by how much. They might have had as little as $4k disposable income per month. Of course that number also factors in if my mother had paid both the home equity line of credit payment and my tuition rather than paying the HELOC payment every month and then immediately borrowing against it again to pay my tuition, which is what she said she did (in one of her "you are why we're poor" rants). Actually, she said she paid for at least one car with the HELOC too, so that payment wouldn't have been extra. Never mind. I can't even picture what finances looked like when my mother was in charge of them. I've tried before, and that way madness lies.]
Friday, September 18, 2015
The Time I Invited My Dad to Come Live With Me
When I was in my early twenties, my dad suffered a wound that got infected. As a paraplegic man, he pulled himself from bed to his wheelchair and back again every day using just his upper body strength and a triangle-shaped "monkey bar" hanging over his bed. He'd been doing this everyday for thirty years, but at some point, something must've caught on his skin below where he had feeling, and a wound formed. It got so severely infected that he had to be hospitalized. He needed intravenous antibiotics and multiple surgeries to repair what had become a gaping wound on his rear end. Because of the location of the wound and the fact that he normally sits in a wheelchair all day, my dad was hospitalized and bedbound. For years.
It was during that time that my mother went further off the deep end than ever before and I helped my dad to divorce her from his hospital bed. That was when I helped save their house from foreclosure too, though the money was all his. He was living in a VA hospital across the state from his home because that was where the closest Spinal Cord Injury unit was located, and he needed their specialized care. He got a weekend pass from the hospital to attend my wedding shortly after his own divorce, but it was hard to achieve. He said they had been threatening him that, if he left for my wedding, he couldn't come back.
A few months after I got married, my dad received a diagnosis that the wound was not improving and no further surgeries would help. He had had problems with wounds for decades, and his more recent type 2 diabetes seemed to worsen his healing abilities. He had been discharged from the hospital a couples times over the years post-surgery and rehabilitation, only to have the wound break down and get infected again, usually within a couple of months. The doctors were at a loss for what else to try and told him that he should just stay in bed for the rest of his life. He was in his fifties at the time.
I talked to my dad on the phone a lot back then. He had internet access, but I was the one who managed things remotely. I hired his divorce attorney, I managed his finances, I talked to his debt collectors, and I looked into options for living bedbound the rest of his life. Because of his disabled veteran status, he could continue living in the nursing home where the hospital had sent him for the price of a pay cut from his monthly disability payments. He could also choose to move back home, a nurse would visit him for wound care daily on the VA's dime, and he could hire an aide to cook him meals and whatnot. This second option was well within his financial capabilities too. I investigated options for living somewhere that was less like a nursing home while still being able to provide him with full-time care. No such places seem to exist.
Ultimately my dad told me he would move back home, do nothing, and let himself die of the ensuing infection. I begged him to give me time to buy a house so he could live with me. I was living in a small apartment with my new husband halfway across the country and working full-time, but I begged him to wait, to stay in the nursing home and hang on for 18 months until I could make arrangements. He agreed.
In the next nine months, my husband and I moved halfway across the country to an area where my husband and I could both potentially find work in our respective industries, an area with one of the best VA hospitals in the country as well as a Spinal Cord Injury unit. It was also an area where we could afford an appropriate house, unlike where we'd been living when we got married. We started telecommuting to our jobs full-time and bought a nice house with a ground floor bedroom and bathroom for my dad, a garage large enough for our car as well as my dad's van, and lots of sunlight. I told my dad the house was ready. He could go to his medical appointments and, if he needed another surgery, he could do it all from here. Then when he checked out, he could convalesce at home with us instead of in a nursing home. I could make him good food like I make for myself so he wouldn't have to deal with the nursing home food he always complained about or his constant battle with them to give him decent diabetes-appropriate meals. He could even have his satellite TV if he wanted to pay for that himself (we only had cable).
He decided he didn't want to move in with me. He said he wanted to try another surgery so he could move back home and live alone again. He didn't want to stay with me while he did those things and move back home later. He didn't want to change things. I realize in retrospect that he was probably never going to move in with me. I grew up hearing idle suicide threats, though not usually from him, and I had spent the last few years hearing my dad talk about how afraid he was of dying (he has a slow-progressing cancer in addition to the wound), in spite of how much he'd always complained about being alive. I had wanted to do whatever I possibly could to make his life livable.
I envisioned a beautiful life for us in my sunny house with lots of windows. It was so unlike the house where I grew up, which was dark and dank and moldy, where my dad complained about the lack of sunlight or fresh air or ceiling fans. My new house had all those things my childhood home lacked, and I had dreamed up all the ways to make a bedbound life nicer, like giving him a Wii (which was new at the time) so he could play games and sports from bed if he wanted. If he recovered enough from being bedbound, he could easily access the kitchen and living room and large deck from his wheelchair. Our neighborhood also had a wheelchair-accessible gym since he'd discovered in a previous round of physical therapy that he rather liked getting exercise. I knew it wouldn't be fun to live from a bed, or even from a wheelchair, but I thought it would be nicer in my house than in a nursing home. We could even celebrate holidays together, which we hadn't done in years except when he'd had surgeries scheduled around the same time and I'd traveled to be with him for both.
I can think of a few reasons my dad might not want to live with me. First, I know he liked living alone, and he hadn't gotten to do it for very long. I wasn't competing with living alone though; I was competing with the nursing home. Second, he might think I'd be like my mother. He barely knows me anyway. Third, it might be easier to continue doing what he hates and complaining about it to me than taking the chance on making a change. If he moved in with me and hated it, he'd have to move again. He hadn't moved in thirty years. And in retrospect, I realize he probably would have hated it. I've never seen him not hate his life except for a few days here and there when he was living at home alone.
In hindsight, I'm relieved he didn't move in with me. I was clinging to the possibility of having a functional parent in my life. My mother had threatened suicide so many times that I couldn't bear the thought of my dad effectively doing the same thing by letting himself die of infection, but I could see him doing it. It was the kind of thing he might do, dying by inaction. I thought I could help, the way I used to think I could help my mother.
When my dad first went into the hospital, he'd started behaving like a different, more optimistic person than the dad I'd known all my life. He laughed more, and he made plans. Being free of my mother was such a good influence on him, much like my moving out had seemed to lift a grey veil from over my face. I thought my mother had been the source of all his anger and unhappiness. Now I know they had both made each others' lives worse, but the longer he was away from her, the more he went back to being the dad I'd always known. I don't think he was physically violent anymore, which made him less scary, but he still lacked empathy. He was still a pessimist and a chronic complainer. He was still someone with whom I wouldn't want to live.
If he were to change his mind and ask to live with me now, I would say no. I can't imagine that question would come up though, under any circumstances. Last I heard, he was living at home with Dante and Dante's ex-girlfriend's son, he seemed relatively happy, and I hope he never has to live in the hospital again. As it stands, he has been out of the hospital for months now, longer now than at any other time in the last decade. Fingers crossed.
It was during that time that my mother went further off the deep end than ever before and I helped my dad to divorce her from his hospital bed. That was when I helped save their house from foreclosure too, though the money was all his. He was living in a VA hospital across the state from his home because that was where the closest Spinal Cord Injury unit was located, and he needed their specialized care. He got a weekend pass from the hospital to attend my wedding shortly after his own divorce, but it was hard to achieve. He said they had been threatening him that, if he left for my wedding, he couldn't come back.
A few months after I got married, my dad received a diagnosis that the wound was not improving and no further surgeries would help. He had had problems with wounds for decades, and his more recent type 2 diabetes seemed to worsen his healing abilities. He had been discharged from the hospital a couples times over the years post-surgery and rehabilitation, only to have the wound break down and get infected again, usually within a couple of months. The doctors were at a loss for what else to try and told him that he should just stay in bed for the rest of his life. He was in his fifties at the time.
I talked to my dad on the phone a lot back then. He had internet access, but I was the one who managed things remotely. I hired his divorce attorney, I managed his finances, I talked to his debt collectors, and I looked into options for living bedbound the rest of his life. Because of his disabled veteran status, he could continue living in the nursing home where the hospital had sent him for the price of a pay cut from his monthly disability payments. He could also choose to move back home, a nurse would visit him for wound care daily on the VA's dime, and he could hire an aide to cook him meals and whatnot. This second option was well within his financial capabilities too. I investigated options for living somewhere that was less like a nursing home while still being able to provide him with full-time care. No such places seem to exist.
Ultimately my dad told me he would move back home, do nothing, and let himself die of the ensuing infection. I begged him to give me time to buy a house so he could live with me. I was living in a small apartment with my new husband halfway across the country and working full-time, but I begged him to wait, to stay in the nursing home and hang on for 18 months until I could make arrangements. He agreed.
In the next nine months, my husband and I moved halfway across the country to an area where my husband and I could both potentially find work in our respective industries, an area with one of the best VA hospitals in the country as well as a Spinal Cord Injury unit. It was also an area where we could afford an appropriate house, unlike where we'd been living when we got married. We started telecommuting to our jobs full-time and bought a nice house with a ground floor bedroom and bathroom for my dad, a garage large enough for our car as well as my dad's van, and lots of sunlight. I told my dad the house was ready. He could go to his medical appointments and, if he needed another surgery, he could do it all from here. Then when he checked out, he could convalesce at home with us instead of in a nursing home. I could make him good food like I make for myself so he wouldn't have to deal with the nursing home food he always complained about or his constant battle with them to give him decent diabetes-appropriate meals. He could even have his satellite TV if he wanted to pay for that himself (we only had cable).
He decided he didn't want to move in with me. He said he wanted to try another surgery so he could move back home and live alone again. He didn't want to stay with me while he did those things and move back home later. He didn't want to change things. I realize in retrospect that he was probably never going to move in with me. I grew up hearing idle suicide threats, though not usually from him, and I had spent the last few years hearing my dad talk about how afraid he was of dying (he has a slow-progressing cancer in addition to the wound), in spite of how much he'd always complained about being alive. I had wanted to do whatever I possibly could to make his life livable.
I envisioned a beautiful life for us in my sunny house with lots of windows. It was so unlike the house where I grew up, which was dark and dank and moldy, where my dad complained about the lack of sunlight or fresh air or ceiling fans. My new house had all those things my childhood home lacked, and I had dreamed up all the ways to make a bedbound life nicer, like giving him a Wii (which was new at the time) so he could play games and sports from bed if he wanted. If he recovered enough from being bedbound, he could easily access the kitchen and living room and large deck from his wheelchair. Our neighborhood also had a wheelchair-accessible gym since he'd discovered in a previous round of physical therapy that he rather liked getting exercise. I knew it wouldn't be fun to live from a bed, or even from a wheelchair, but I thought it would be nicer in my house than in a nursing home. We could even celebrate holidays together, which we hadn't done in years except when he'd had surgeries scheduled around the same time and I'd traveled to be with him for both.
I can think of a few reasons my dad might not want to live with me. First, I know he liked living alone, and he hadn't gotten to do it for very long. I wasn't competing with living alone though; I was competing with the nursing home. Second, he might think I'd be like my mother. He barely knows me anyway. Third, it might be easier to continue doing what he hates and complaining about it to me than taking the chance on making a change. If he moved in with me and hated it, he'd have to move again. He hadn't moved in thirty years. And in retrospect, I realize he probably would have hated it. I've never seen him not hate his life except for a few days here and there when he was living at home alone.
In hindsight, I'm relieved he didn't move in with me. I was clinging to the possibility of having a functional parent in my life. My mother had threatened suicide so many times that I couldn't bear the thought of my dad effectively doing the same thing by letting himself die of infection, but I could see him doing it. It was the kind of thing he might do, dying by inaction. I thought I could help, the way I used to think I could help my mother.
When my dad first went into the hospital, he'd started behaving like a different, more optimistic person than the dad I'd known all my life. He laughed more, and he made plans. Being free of my mother was such a good influence on him, much like my moving out had seemed to lift a grey veil from over my face. I thought my mother had been the source of all his anger and unhappiness. Now I know they had both made each others' lives worse, but the longer he was away from her, the more he went back to being the dad I'd always known. I don't think he was physically violent anymore, which made him less scary, but he still lacked empathy. He was still a pessimist and a chronic complainer. He was still someone with whom I wouldn't want to live.
If he were to change his mind and ask to live with me now, I would say no. I can't imagine that question would come up though, under any circumstances. Last I heard, he was living at home with Dante and Dante's ex-girlfriend's son, he seemed relatively happy, and I hope he never has to live in the hospital again. As it stands, he has been out of the hospital for months now, longer now than at any other time in the last decade. Fingers crossed.
Friday, June 12, 2015
The Kid Left Behind
My dad emailed me a few days ago to say that he is out of the hospital and living in his own house again. My older brother Dante moved back home years ago, shortly after my mother moved out. He told my dad he was being evicted for failing to pay rent. He has always been against paying rent. He brought his girlfriend and her son with him. He has apparently broken up with his girlfriend since then, but her son, Aiden, still lives at the house.
It's a bachelor pad now, my dad said, just the three of them. He also said Aiden missed his last year of high school because his mother didn't enroll him before she left and Dante "didn't have the right paperwork." He's spent the last year alone in his room (my old room, by deductive reasoning) playing video games. This angers my dad, who says he needs to get a job or at least enroll at a trade school. It reminded me of the way he used to talk about Dante. He didn't like Dante.
Dante at least had parents who made him go to school.
I only met Aiden once, at my wedding when he was about ten. He seemed like a sweet kid, ginger hair and a shy smile and a lisp. Dante was the father figure in his life from the time he was four. That thought scares me. I have known Dante since he was six, and we lived in adjacent bedrooms for 18 years. My bedroom door -- now Aiden's bedroom door -- has a knee-shaped splintering from one of Dante's rages when he tried to break it down to get to me. Another time he wrapped his hands around my neck and simultaneously choked me while lifting me off the ground. These events happened when he was in his twenties and I was a teenage girl. These are not the worst things he did, but I don't want to talk about those. I believe he is a psychopath.
My mother told me Dante had grown up and changed once he was in his thirties, that he was so great with Aiden that the kid was the only reason he hadn't broken up with his girlfriend. That Aiden loved him so much that he'd suggested as a very young child that they could both leave his mother and live together, just the two of them. None of this seemed weird to her, just complimentary.
I am ashamed to admit it didn't even occur to me until Aiden was 17 that my brother might have abused him. It only occurred to me when I was talking to my therapist about him and she gave me a look and asked how old he was, so basically it occurred to my therapist. She was a mandated reporter and wanted to know if she needed to contact the local Child Protective Services. Apparently the things I said would have warranted a call if he'd been younger. He's at an age where no one cares about him now.
The times I've met Dante since moving out, I saw no change in him. He's very good with strangers, very personable, and we're effectively strangers now, so we're cordial. The last time I talked to him was three or four years ago. We exchanged pleasantries -- he congratulated me on my new baby he would never meet and I asked about his garden I would never see -- but only because I'd called my dad at home and Dante had answered. It's the sort of relationship I would expect to have with a neighbor I saw commit a murder. The goal is to keep my distance and not to seem like a threat.
I don't know what to do about Aiden. I don't think there is anything I can do. He's still young. He could still get out and do things, but he's 18 so no one will help him. He still seems like a sweet, albeit mostly grown, kid, at least based on my skulking quietly on his Facebook page. He has some local family on social media, but they haven't taken him in. He posts regularly about anime and being lonely. I don't know where his mother went. I know it's unlikely, but I'm not 100% certain my brother didn't murder her. She has no internet presence, and I don't know anyone who would have seen her. I don't want to turn up on Dante's radar. I don't know what to do.
It's a bachelor pad now, my dad said, just the three of them. He also said Aiden missed his last year of high school because his mother didn't enroll him before she left and Dante "didn't have the right paperwork." He's spent the last year alone in his room (my old room, by deductive reasoning) playing video games. This angers my dad, who says he needs to get a job or at least enroll at a trade school. It reminded me of the way he used to talk about Dante. He didn't like Dante.
Dante at least had parents who made him go to school.
I only met Aiden once, at my wedding when he was about ten. He seemed like a sweet kid, ginger hair and a shy smile and a lisp. Dante was the father figure in his life from the time he was four. That thought scares me. I have known Dante since he was six, and we lived in adjacent bedrooms for 18 years. My bedroom door -- now Aiden's bedroom door -- has a knee-shaped splintering from one of Dante's rages when he tried to break it down to get to me. Another time he wrapped his hands around my neck and simultaneously choked me while lifting me off the ground. These events happened when he was in his twenties and I was a teenage girl. These are not the worst things he did, but I don't want to talk about those. I believe he is a psychopath.
My mother told me Dante had grown up and changed once he was in his thirties, that he was so great with Aiden that the kid was the only reason he hadn't broken up with his girlfriend. That Aiden loved him so much that he'd suggested as a very young child that they could both leave his mother and live together, just the two of them. None of this seemed weird to her, just complimentary.
I am ashamed to admit it didn't even occur to me until Aiden was 17 that my brother might have abused him. It only occurred to me when I was talking to my therapist about him and she gave me a look and asked how old he was, so basically it occurred to my therapist. She was a mandated reporter and wanted to know if she needed to contact the local Child Protective Services. Apparently the things I said would have warranted a call if he'd been younger. He's at an age where no one cares about him now.
The times I've met Dante since moving out, I saw no change in him. He's very good with strangers, very personable, and we're effectively strangers now, so we're cordial. The last time I talked to him was three or four years ago. We exchanged pleasantries -- he congratulated me on my new baby he would never meet and I asked about his garden I would never see -- but only because I'd called my dad at home and Dante had answered. It's the sort of relationship I would expect to have with a neighbor I saw commit a murder. The goal is to keep my distance and not to seem like a threat.
I don't know what to do about Aiden. I don't think there is anything I can do. He's still young. He could still get out and do things, but he's 18 so no one will help him. He still seems like a sweet, albeit mostly grown, kid, at least based on my skulking quietly on his Facebook page. He has some local family on social media, but they haven't taken him in. He posts regularly about anime and being lonely. I don't know where his mother went. I know it's unlikely, but I'm not 100% certain my brother didn't murder her. She has no internet presence, and I don't know anyone who would have seen her. I don't want to turn up on Dante's radar. I don't know what to do.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Divide & Conquer: How I Got My Parents Divorced
When I was young, I remember my mother telling me that she would divorce my dad if I wanted her to, but that we'd have to move out of the house and be poor and she was leaving the decision entirely up to me whether these things happened or not. It turns out she was right. I take credit for making their divorce finally happen.
After my mother stopped paying the mortgage and sold my dad's prized possessions, I finally convinced my dad to file for divorce. She was calling ambulances and visiting the ER on a semi-regular basis for her imagined ailments, and their joint debt increased, if not exponentially, at least very very quickly. As I saw it, they never should have been married, so there was no reason for him to stay tied to someone who was so clearly trying to drown them both. It reminded me of the dilemma people like to pose in which two people are drowning. Which one do you save? The one who isn't trying to drown all of us.
I was in my early 20s and had no idea what I was doing, but I knew my dad's sister had won an important court case a number of years earlier. I called her, and she gave me her lawyer's name and phone number. He wasn't a divorce attorney, but he knew a good one, and he gave me that lawyer's name and number. I called the divorce attorney and arranged for a free consultation between him and my dad. He sounded like he knew what he was doing, so we hired him. I would pay the attorney fees through my joint account with my dad. The first step was to get my parents legally separated.
The legal separation was important because of how quickly my mother accrued debt. She had recently maxed out a credit card she found in my dad's name, and when my dad called the bank to say it was identity theft on the part of his wife, they canceled it and issued a new card, which she found in the mail and maxed out as well. She called herself an ambulance every time she fell down, and she had no medical insurance. She could rack up tens of thousands of dollars in hospital bills in the course of 24 hours and sometimes did. As long as my parents remained married, it was joint debt. When they became separated, any new debt she acquired would be hers alone. It was a band-aid on a gaping wound, but it was something.
When my mother received the divorce papers, she called me in tears. She said it was a shock, completely unexpected. She had been threatening divorce repeatedly, but it hadn't occurred to her that anyone might actually want the divorce to happen. She sobbed and bargained that she would even be willing to live on a budget if this would just go away. It hadn't occurred to me until then that she had genuinely never kept track of any of the money that passed through her hands. She'd spat out "live on a budget" like it meant "eat cat food and live outside." She found herself a lawyer who didn't require money upfront but would ask the court to make my dad pay her fees instead. It appeared to be her only qualification.
My mother asked for $1,500 in monthly spousal support payments during the separation, which the court granted. I had previously deposited the entirety of my dad's monthly check into her account after paying the mortgage -- some $7,200 per month for her personal discretionary use -- so I had to stop doing that in order to be able to pay her the requested $1,500. My dad put the other household bills -- electricity, gas, phone, cable and satellite (they couldn't agree on just one so they had both), trash collection, the works -- on auto-pay from our joint account. The only things my mother would need to pay for regularly from her $1,500 per month were food, toiletries, and anything else she chose to buy for herself. I set up a savings account for my dad where I socked away all the money that she was no longer receiving. The money compounded quickly.
My parents had to go through mediation, which involved filling out forms where they each listed what they owned jointly and what they felt each of them should receive. My mother's forms made no sense. She felt they should each get the washer and dryer. They should each get the stove. Her suggestions were mathematically impossible.
They agreed that my dad should get the house, which was a relief to me. I had spoken with the mortgage company already and determined that, while one of them could be removed from the deed to the house, neither could be removed from the mortgage. Had my mother received the house, run down as it was, my dad would have had to pay her enough to keep up with the mortgage -- which cost more than her monthly spousal support checks totaled -- which she would have still likely chosen not to pay. The mortgage company would then go after my dad for even more money, and his already paltry credit score would get worse. I told him to ask for the house to avoid any of that happening. The house had been custom built to be handicapped accessible for him, so I said he should argue that point. It turned out not to be necessary. My mother has a history of refusing to ask for what she wants or needs, wanting instead for people to simply know and give it to her. I believe she made this mistake when she offered him the house.
My mother had a rough time with the divorce. She went through phases in which she wouldn't even respond to her own lawyer. I believe she was in a depression during these times since that was generally the only thing that kept her silent. She sometimes missed court dates, even though they were conducted via phone for my bedridden dad's benefit. Her behavior annoyed the judge, which did not go well for her. She drew out the divorce proceedings for years.
First she tried to have the divorce thrown out by arguing that she had cared for my dad when he was disabled and that he was discarding her now that she was disabled and mentally ill (she had never admitted to the possibility of being mentally ill before this point, and now it was in court documents). I found a court case of a woman in their state who had tried this same tack to no avail. My parents lived in a "no fault" state. The only cause for divorce was "irreconcilable differences." None of her arguments helped her. She couldn't force him to stay married to her.
When my mother finally asked for more money as spousal support -- she was currently receiving $1,500 per month of my dad's almost $10k monthly income -- the judge told her if she wanted more money she should get a job. He said he saw no evidence that she had any kind of disability that should prevent her from working.
She asked the court to require my dad to buy her a new car. Denied.
My mother asked the court to require my dad to keep her as primary beneficiary on his life insurance policy, including all the new life insurance policies she had taken out against him in recent months. He and I had both worried for his physical safety during his last stay at home from the hospital. My mother doesn't have a history of violence, but she was not the same person who had raised me. I didn't know her anymore. She rarely seemed lucid, and she sometimes seemed psychotic. Even if she never became violent herself, I could see her promising someone else money to cause harm to someone she hates, like my dad. No one had to mention this seemingly ridiculous concern to the court. The judge just told my mother no, and my dad canceled all the new life insurance policies she had taken out against him. He still had a small one that the VA paid for, and he made me the primary beneficiary. The understanding was that I would use it to pay for his cremation and then split any leftover money 50/50 with Dante. I think he knew as well as I did that any money given to Dante would disappear as quickly as it would with my mother.
The divorce became final when my mother's lawyer asked the court to excuse her from the case because she wanted her money and my mother wasn't responding to phone calls anymore. The judge ordered my dad to pay my mother's attorney, which I did from his account, and everything was final. My mother was given three months to move out of the house, which she mostly spent sleeping in what used to be Dante's bedroom. She had ordered a portable storage pod, which sat empty in the driveway. Whenever Dante visited the house, he said she hadn't appeared to have packed anything. After the three months came and went and my mother had made no attempt to vacate the house, my dad went back to the court, which granted her more time, during which she made still no attempt to pack or move.
The court eventually ordered her to leave. She moved in with her parents in a neighboring town, taking almost nothing with her since she never packed. The storage pod remained empty in the driveway when she left. Her brothers came by their parents' house each day to care for them, cook, clean, and do laundry. Since she did nothing to care for herself, they looked after her too.
After my mother stopped paying the mortgage and sold my dad's prized possessions, I finally convinced my dad to file for divorce. She was calling ambulances and visiting the ER on a semi-regular basis for her imagined ailments, and their joint debt increased, if not exponentially, at least very very quickly. As I saw it, they never should have been married, so there was no reason for him to stay tied to someone who was so clearly trying to drown them both. It reminded me of the dilemma people like to pose in which two people are drowning. Which one do you save? The one who isn't trying to drown all of us.
I was in my early 20s and had no idea what I was doing, but I knew my dad's sister had won an important court case a number of years earlier. I called her, and she gave me her lawyer's name and phone number. He wasn't a divorce attorney, but he knew a good one, and he gave me that lawyer's name and number. I called the divorce attorney and arranged for a free consultation between him and my dad. He sounded like he knew what he was doing, so we hired him. I would pay the attorney fees through my joint account with my dad. The first step was to get my parents legally separated.
The legal separation was important because of how quickly my mother accrued debt. She had recently maxed out a credit card she found in my dad's name, and when my dad called the bank to say it was identity theft on the part of his wife, they canceled it and issued a new card, which she found in the mail and maxed out as well. She called herself an ambulance every time she fell down, and she had no medical insurance. She could rack up tens of thousands of dollars in hospital bills in the course of 24 hours and sometimes did. As long as my parents remained married, it was joint debt. When they became separated, any new debt she acquired would be hers alone. It was a band-aid on a gaping wound, but it was something.
When my mother received the divorce papers, she called me in tears. She said it was a shock, completely unexpected. She had been threatening divorce repeatedly, but it hadn't occurred to her that anyone might actually want the divorce to happen. She sobbed and bargained that she would even be willing to live on a budget if this would just go away. It hadn't occurred to me until then that she had genuinely never kept track of any of the money that passed through her hands. She'd spat out "live on a budget" like it meant "eat cat food and live outside." She found herself a lawyer who didn't require money upfront but would ask the court to make my dad pay her fees instead. It appeared to be her only qualification.
My mother asked for $1,500 in monthly spousal support payments during the separation, which the court granted. I had previously deposited the entirety of my dad's monthly check into her account after paying the mortgage -- some $7,200 per month for her personal discretionary use -- so I had to stop doing that in order to be able to pay her the requested $1,500. My dad put the other household bills -- electricity, gas, phone, cable and satellite (they couldn't agree on just one so they had both), trash collection, the works -- on auto-pay from our joint account. The only things my mother would need to pay for regularly from her $1,500 per month were food, toiletries, and anything else she chose to buy for herself. I set up a savings account for my dad where I socked away all the money that she was no longer receiving. The money compounded quickly.
My parents had to go through mediation, which involved filling out forms where they each listed what they owned jointly and what they felt each of them should receive. My mother's forms made no sense. She felt they should each get the washer and dryer. They should each get the stove. Her suggestions were mathematically impossible.
They agreed that my dad should get the house, which was a relief to me. I had spoken with the mortgage company already and determined that, while one of them could be removed from the deed to the house, neither could be removed from the mortgage. Had my mother received the house, run down as it was, my dad would have had to pay her enough to keep up with the mortgage -- which cost more than her monthly spousal support checks totaled -- which she would have still likely chosen not to pay. The mortgage company would then go after my dad for even more money, and his already paltry credit score would get worse. I told him to ask for the house to avoid any of that happening. The house had been custom built to be handicapped accessible for him, so I said he should argue that point. It turned out not to be necessary. My mother has a history of refusing to ask for what she wants or needs, wanting instead for people to simply know and give it to her. I believe she made this mistake when she offered him the house.
My mother had a rough time with the divorce. She went through phases in which she wouldn't even respond to her own lawyer. I believe she was in a depression during these times since that was generally the only thing that kept her silent. She sometimes missed court dates, even though they were conducted via phone for my bedridden dad's benefit. Her behavior annoyed the judge, which did not go well for her. She drew out the divorce proceedings for years.
First she tried to have the divorce thrown out by arguing that she had cared for my dad when he was disabled and that he was discarding her now that she was disabled and mentally ill (she had never admitted to the possibility of being mentally ill before this point, and now it was in court documents). I found a court case of a woman in their state who had tried this same tack to no avail. My parents lived in a "no fault" state. The only cause for divorce was "irreconcilable differences." None of her arguments helped her. She couldn't force him to stay married to her.
When my mother finally asked for more money as spousal support -- she was currently receiving $1,500 per month of my dad's almost $10k monthly income -- the judge told her if she wanted more money she should get a job. He said he saw no evidence that she had any kind of disability that should prevent her from working.
She asked the court to require my dad to buy her a new car. Denied.
My mother asked the court to require my dad to keep her as primary beneficiary on his life insurance policy, including all the new life insurance policies she had taken out against him in recent months. He and I had both worried for his physical safety during his last stay at home from the hospital. My mother doesn't have a history of violence, but she was not the same person who had raised me. I didn't know her anymore. She rarely seemed lucid, and she sometimes seemed psychotic. Even if she never became violent herself, I could see her promising someone else money to cause harm to someone she hates, like my dad. No one had to mention this seemingly ridiculous concern to the court. The judge just told my mother no, and my dad canceled all the new life insurance policies she had taken out against him. He still had a small one that the VA paid for, and he made me the primary beneficiary. The understanding was that I would use it to pay for his cremation and then split any leftover money 50/50 with Dante. I think he knew as well as I did that any money given to Dante would disappear as quickly as it would with my mother.
The divorce became final when my mother's lawyer asked the court to excuse her from the case because she wanted her money and my mother wasn't responding to phone calls anymore. The judge ordered my dad to pay my mother's attorney, which I did from his account, and everything was final. My mother was given three months to move out of the house, which she mostly spent sleeping in what used to be Dante's bedroom. She had ordered a portable storage pod, which sat empty in the driveway. Whenever Dante visited the house, he said she hadn't appeared to have packed anything. After the three months came and went and my mother had made no attempt to vacate the house, my dad went back to the court, which granted her more time, during which she made still no attempt to pack or move.
The court eventually ordered her to leave. She moved in with her parents in a neighboring town, taking almost nothing with her since she never packed. The storage pod remained empty in the driveway when she left. Her brothers came by their parents' house each day to care for them, cook, clean, and do laundry. Since she did nothing to care for herself, they looked after her too.
Friday, May 1, 2015
My Mother, Savior of Convicts
On the Greyhound bus home from seeing my dad in the hospital, my mother said she met some convicts who were in the process of being transferred between prisons. One of them stole her cell phone, or she left it behind and he kept it. When she got home, she said she called her phone and the man who had sat beside her answered. His name was Jeremy.* She told him to give back her phone, and Jeremy explained that he couldn't. She threatened to cancel her phone plan, and he begged her not to. His life depended on that phone, he said. Another prisoner would kill him if he didn't have that phone and let him use it. So my mother continued paying for her cell phone while a small subsection of the local prison population used it.
Some months later, Jeremy got out of prison. He contacted my mother, who invited him to live in her home. My dad was still in the hospital, and Dante had found his own apartment, so no one else was around. She promised Jeremy and another ex-convict, Sam*, several hundred dollars per day to clean the house. These were the kinds of extravagant offers she often made and never paid.
She also invited another woman, Beth, to live at the house too, though I don't know how they met. I only know that Beth slept in a hospital-style bed my mother claims to have spent several thousand dollars on, and bled on it, and had hepatitis. My mother complained about her hepatitis blood ruining the mattress long after Beth moved out. I remember talk of a second woman living there briefly, but I remember nothing about her.
As one of their odd jobs around the house, my mother asked Jeremy and Sam to fix Dante's car, which was sitting broken in the driveway. She gave them the keys, and when she came back outside and discovered both the car and the men were gone, she called the police. She told the police her son's car had been stolen. The police found both the men and the car at a local gas station, and both Jeremy and Sam went back to prison.
*This was not his name.
Some months later, Jeremy got out of prison. He contacted my mother, who invited him to live in her home. My dad was still in the hospital, and Dante had found his own apartment, so no one else was around. She promised Jeremy and another ex-convict, Sam*, several hundred dollars per day to clean the house. These were the kinds of extravagant offers she often made and never paid.
She also invited another woman, Beth, to live at the house too, though I don't know how they met. I only know that Beth slept in a hospital-style bed my mother claims to have spent several thousand dollars on, and bled on it, and had hepatitis. My mother complained about her hepatitis blood ruining the mattress long after Beth moved out. I remember talk of a second woman living there briefly, but I remember nothing about her.
As one of their odd jobs around the house, my mother asked Jeremy and Sam to fix Dante's car, which was sitting broken in the driveway. She gave them the keys, and when she came back outside and discovered both the car and the men were gone, she called the police. She told the police her son's car had been stolen. The police found both the men and the car at a local gas station, and both Jeremy and Sam went back to prison.
*This was not his name.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Mother Goes to College
Both my parents came from working class families filled with mostly skilled laborers and artists, where going to college was unusual. I had always planned to go to college for as long as I can remember, originally planning to attend an Ivy League school and become a doctor, and my parents had been supportive of my ambitions. One of my cousins started taking a sign language interpretation course so that she could hopefully pay rent while looking for work as an actress. As I got closer to graduating high school, my mother tried to convince me to do the same. I could continue living at home and attend a local community college to become a sign language interpreter too and then, she said, I could finance my own four-year degree after that. This had never been my plan -- neither the extra two years of school nor staying in the same state as my parents -- and I refused.
When I solidified my college plans and got ready to move out, my mother decided she would go to college too. She would attend the local community college and become a sign language interpreter. I thought this was a fantastic idea. While my older brother, Dante, was still living at home when he hadn't recently been kicked out again by one of our parents, he was no longer treated like a child and my mother seemed to be going through empty nest anxiety. Second, she had a history of taking jobs for which she was both overqualified and ill suited -- fast food service, warehouse temp work, the paper route -- often followed by getting injured in some way or doing something else that would abruptly end the job. Finally she was aspiring to a job that required her to become more qualified and might hold her interest too.
My mother was very nervous about the community college entrance exam. She was a perfectionist. She told me that, in high school, she had taken remedial classes whenever possible so that she could be the best in the class. The community college entrance exam covered two years worth of math she hadn't taken. In preparation for the exam, she bought some geometry and trigonometry flashcards, and I taught the subjects to her. It was unexpectedly easy. She understood most concepts without my having to explain them twice. She was obviously smart -- even at math, which I consider hard -- but she demurred and gave all the credit to my teaching. She'd never believed she was smart and certainly never expected to go to college. I understand the second part -- neither of her parents finished high school, they were poor, and she was a girl in the '60s -- but I don't know why they didn't tell her she was smart. She always told me I was smart, and it is the one thing I never doubt about myself.
She had to write an entrance essay too. It was riddled with unnecessary commas and all the same cliches she used when she spoke. In fact, it sounded exactly like how she talked. If she'd been writing as a character, it would have been fantastic. Her style required a bit of tweaking and editing for an academic setting, but she was a good writer. She didn't believe me.
She was afraid the other students would make fun of her. She was an old, fat lady, she said. She was self-conscious about her appearance, her eyebrows. I reassured her and taught her to apply makeup. First she seemed happy and calmer; when it came time to visit the school, she said it looked ridiculous.
Finally the summer ended and we both started classes. She made two new friends, one my age and one a little older than Dante. I was homesick, halfway across the country from anyone I knew, so I called home a lot. My mother got angrier. "I let you go to that school because I thought it would make you happy!" "All you ever do is talk about yourself!" Aside from the homesickness, I was actually happier. School was hard, and I had to make all new friends, but having access to healthy food whenever I wanted it, walking outside without anyone stopping me, and living in a clean space with friendly people had a positive effect on me. Colors looked brighter. It was literally like a grey veil was lifting. I was just experiencing new stressors and missed my mother.
She upset one of her new friends by saying her 4-year-old daughter was so fat she looked nine months pregnant. She didn't understand why her friend was upset. "It's true!" she insisted. This was her standard defense when someone became upset at her insults. Her other friend got married and adopted a toddler. She told me about each of her friends' marital and sexual problems. She recounted the stupid decisions they made and how each of them was better and kinder to her than me. I don't know if her insults were becoming less subtle or if I was becoming more attuned to them.
Near the end of her two-year degree program, my mother's anxiety attacks reached an apex. With less than a semester left, she dropped out of her classes. I couldn't convince her to stick it out.
When I solidified my college plans and got ready to move out, my mother decided she would go to college too. She would attend the local community college and become a sign language interpreter. I thought this was a fantastic idea. While my older brother, Dante, was still living at home when he hadn't recently been kicked out again by one of our parents, he was no longer treated like a child and my mother seemed to be going through empty nest anxiety. Second, she had a history of taking jobs for which she was both overqualified and ill suited -- fast food service, warehouse temp work, the paper route -- often followed by getting injured in some way or doing something else that would abruptly end the job. Finally she was aspiring to a job that required her to become more qualified and might hold her interest too.
My mother was very nervous about the community college entrance exam. She was a perfectionist. She told me that, in high school, she had taken remedial classes whenever possible so that she could be the best in the class. The community college entrance exam covered two years worth of math she hadn't taken. In preparation for the exam, she bought some geometry and trigonometry flashcards, and I taught the subjects to her. It was unexpectedly easy. She understood most concepts without my having to explain them twice. She was obviously smart -- even at math, which I consider hard -- but she demurred and gave all the credit to my teaching. She'd never believed she was smart and certainly never expected to go to college. I understand the second part -- neither of her parents finished high school, they were poor, and she was a girl in the '60s -- but I don't know why they didn't tell her she was smart. She always told me I was smart, and it is the one thing I never doubt about myself.
She had to write an entrance essay too. It was riddled with unnecessary commas and all the same cliches she used when she spoke. In fact, it sounded exactly like how she talked. If she'd been writing as a character, it would have been fantastic. Her style required a bit of tweaking and editing for an academic setting, but she was a good writer. She didn't believe me.
She was afraid the other students would make fun of her. She was an old, fat lady, she said. She was self-conscious about her appearance, her eyebrows. I reassured her and taught her to apply makeup. First she seemed happy and calmer; when it came time to visit the school, she said it looked ridiculous.
Finally the summer ended and we both started classes. She made two new friends, one my age and one a little older than Dante. I was homesick, halfway across the country from anyone I knew, so I called home a lot. My mother got angrier. "I let you go to that school because I thought it would make you happy!" "All you ever do is talk about yourself!" Aside from the homesickness, I was actually happier. School was hard, and I had to make all new friends, but having access to healthy food whenever I wanted it, walking outside without anyone stopping me, and living in a clean space with friendly people had a positive effect on me. Colors looked brighter. It was literally like a grey veil was lifting. I was just experiencing new stressors and missed my mother.
She upset one of her new friends by saying her 4-year-old daughter was so fat she looked nine months pregnant. She didn't understand why her friend was upset. "It's true!" she insisted. This was her standard defense when someone became upset at her insults. Her other friend got married and adopted a toddler. She told me about each of her friends' marital and sexual problems. She recounted the stupid decisions they made and how each of them was better and kinder to her than me. I don't know if her insults were becoming less subtle or if I was becoming more attuned to them.
Near the end of her two-year degree program, my mother's anxiety attacks reached an apex. With less than a semester left, she dropped out of her classes. I couldn't convince her to stick it out.
Sunday, March 29, 2015
My Mother's Paper Route
Because we lived off my dad's veterans disability checks and social security, my mother said the government limited how much she could earn to $5,000 per year. Because that is approximately half of what my the government gave my family per month (yes, the checks totaled close to $10k per month tax free -- I know the numbers because I managed my parents' finances for several years -- more on that another time), she never needed to work for a living. She retired from nursing at the age of 24 when they adopted my older brother, but she took on a handful of odd jobs and get-rich-quick schemes over the years. This was one of the strangest: the paper route.
I was in my early teens when my mother got her paper route, which means she was in her early forties. To me, paper routes were something kids with bicycles did for a first job when they were still too young to be baggers at the local grocery store. I didn't know any paperboys, but according to TV shows, the child would get up early, get the papers ready, and ride his bike through his route, throwing a paper at each doorstep. He would finish by sun-up and then do other things. This was not what my mother did.
My mother got the papers ready throughout the day while I was at school and sometimes while I was at home. They were scattered across the living room floor as she worked through them, which might have seemed more foreign if she hadn't already been a hoarder and the floors already strewn with random debris. I'm not sure how long it took her to roll up the papers and slip them into their plastic casings each day, but I saw her doing it a lot, so it seemed like hours.
Then when I got home from school, we would load them into the car and she would drive me to the neighborhood where her route was. Then she told me to get out of the car and deliver the papers door-to-door. I had to hang them nicely on the door handles, NO! we could not throw them from the car window like people do on TV, and if someone was outside, I had to hand deliver the paper personally and talk with the person and exchange pleasantries. She would see if I didn't because she drove slowly down the street, watching me while I walked and delivered papers. If I hung the paper on a door knob when a person was somewhere outside, even if they were engaged in something like mowing the lawn, she would yell at me to go back and hand deliver the paper. I was shy, which made interacting with strangers difficult on its own, but doing my mother's paper route in this weird, forced way while she yelled at me from her slow-moving car mortified me. Sometimes the people she saw outside who she wanted me to hand deliver papers to were my classmates, which was worse.
When we finished her route, it was usually around 4pm and I was famished. She had pretty much stopped cooking by that point in my life, so then she would take me out to dinner, usually to Denny's, where she complained that it cost as much to feed me as she earned doing her paper route.
Her original plan had been to build a paper route empire. She said she'd heard of another middle-aged woman who subcontracted out multiple paper routes to local children, taking a cut of their pay while they did all the delivering, and this scalable model appealed to her. She never made it that far though. She just drove slowly alongside me, watching me deliver papers every afternoon, until one day she told me she quit.
I was in my early teens when my mother got her paper route, which means she was in her early forties. To me, paper routes were something kids with bicycles did for a first job when they were still too young to be baggers at the local grocery store. I didn't know any paperboys, but according to TV shows, the child would get up early, get the papers ready, and ride his bike through his route, throwing a paper at each doorstep. He would finish by sun-up and then do other things. This was not what my mother did.
My mother got the papers ready throughout the day while I was at school and sometimes while I was at home. They were scattered across the living room floor as she worked through them, which might have seemed more foreign if she hadn't already been a hoarder and the floors already strewn with random debris. I'm not sure how long it took her to roll up the papers and slip them into their plastic casings each day, but I saw her doing it a lot, so it seemed like hours.
Then when I got home from school, we would load them into the car and she would drive me to the neighborhood where her route was. Then she told me to get out of the car and deliver the papers door-to-door. I had to hang them nicely on the door handles, NO! we could not throw them from the car window like people do on TV, and if someone was outside, I had to hand deliver the paper personally and talk with the person and exchange pleasantries. She would see if I didn't because she drove slowly down the street, watching me while I walked and delivered papers. If I hung the paper on a door knob when a person was somewhere outside, even if they were engaged in something like mowing the lawn, she would yell at me to go back and hand deliver the paper. I was shy, which made interacting with strangers difficult on its own, but doing my mother's paper route in this weird, forced way while she yelled at me from her slow-moving car mortified me. Sometimes the people she saw outside who she wanted me to hand deliver papers to were my classmates, which was worse.
When we finished her route, it was usually around 4pm and I was famished. She had pretty much stopped cooking by that point in my life, so then she would take me out to dinner, usually to Denny's, where she complained that it cost as much to feed me as she earned doing her paper route.
Her original plan had been to build a paper route empire. She said she'd heard of another middle-aged woman who subcontracted out multiple paper routes to local children, taking a cut of their pay while they did all the delivering, and this scalable model appealed to her. She never made it that far though. She just drove slowly alongside me, watching me deliver papers every afternoon, until one day she told me she quit.
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