Awkwardness

Open adoption does not get easier with time, you just adjust to living with the discomfort and awkwardness it brings into your life. Maybe not every adoptive parent feels this way, but I do. It isn’t easy for me to constantly set aside my own desires, my comfort and personal preference to be the bigger person and not selfishly isolate. It is hard to remain open to and with someone who you don’t share many or any of the same beliefs or moral codes or have anything but one very important person in common. I try to be gracious but I don’t think I always am. I try to be understanding but it gets tiring to see someone continually follow the same damaging pattern. I try to remain open but sometimes I just don’t want to do it anymore. Yet, I do. I am committed to open adoption even when it causes me to feel a lot of stress.

 

Last night, I had just laid down with Love Bug to get him to sleep when Primero popped into the room. His mom, who had been staying in town to be near her ailing father who signed himself out of the hospital Wednesday night, wasn’t getting along with people where she was staying and she needed a place to go. Story of her life. So, of course she calls Primero. He picked her up and brought her to our house. I told him she would need to leave the house when we did the next morning and that he couldn’t stay up all night, he needed to sleep to be ready for school. The three of us sat awkwardly in the living room trying to watch the first episode of American Horror Story, which his mom talked over so I missed key points. I don’t actually care because I don’t like the gruesome show, I only watch it with Primero to give us something to do together. Still, it bugs me to miss salient parts that I know will reappear. When I text Primero about his mom talking and me missing things, he got defensive. Never mind I had to sit in my own living room and hear him call her Mom a thousand times while my soul died, I can’t express annoyance at someone talking over a show.

 

And that’s the rub, I suppose. Primero shows obvious deferential treatment to his mom while I get his contempt and I’ll-do-what-I-want attitude. He likes coming to his mother’s rescue, but even he complained that she was ungrateful because she mentioned numerous times to Esperanza in their telephone conversation (one they would not have in front of me because I’m not privy to the going-on’s of the family) that she shouldn’t have come. To me, she said more than one thing to ruffle my feathers. Not that they weren’t already slightly askew just due to her presence, but she has a way with back-handed compliments. First, she chided me on allowing Primero to bring “people” into the house that then turn around and disrespect me. But, apparently she wasn’t “people” and neither was Esperanza. She chastised me for having too many kids, counting the animals as children. She birthed 6 children, but 3 are too many for me.  This morning she commented, “this house is just so tiny!” to which my mouth almost responded, “it’s bigger than your place.” Because she has no place of her own.

 

Primero and I got into a tiff this morning because he was going to stay home until 8:30 since that was when his mother’s ride could pick her up. He got incredibly angry with me when I suggested she find a place outside to wait, stating I was being rude and I wouldn’t treat my only family that way. Only, I would. If I said you needed to leave when I leave then that is what I meant. And, Primero has already had 4 tardy’s from school and it’s only the 4^th week of school, two of those weeks being abbreviated for Labor Day. So, no, I didn’t want him going into school late. Again. He refused to see this as a pattern or habit and insists being late does not affect his academic performance. So, in addition to all the above, I get to be the bad guy and force him to go to school on time.

 

If you are sitting there wondering why I do this, I am sitting here thinking the same thing. It isn’t fun, I don’t like it. I suppose I would tell you I do it for Primero. And, a part of me does feel bad for his mom. Her life is not enviable. Maybe it’s guilt because I have her child in my home? Perhaps it’s a false sense of responsibility. The bottom line is I’m just plain dumb. My kindness is repaid in issues and passive-aggressive comments. It’s probably a good thing I don’t have a bigger house or I might be stuck with more unwanted guests on a regular basis.