Alas, my mother -- being a fair-minded woman -- just will not submit. In a noncommittal tone, my mother's response to my sister's list of grievances against me is that people grow apart. In her blog (forgive me that I don't link to my sister's blog, but I don't want to risk her finding mine and using it as a pretext for harassing me), my sister writes about how my mother refuses to understand her and how my sister is reduced to tears by my mother's nonchalant behavior.
The most telling bit is when my mother responds by telling my sister: "You're grown-ups. You created this fight by yourselves." My sister then tells the world about, gasp!, my mother's failure! You got it -- this is all my mother's fault, darn it! If only my mother had taken charge.
Then, oddly enough, my sister thinks that she can reinforce the view of my mother as a failure by talking about her weaknesses: 1) she can't drive; 2) she doesn't speak English. Let me talk first about my mother's English. It isn't that my mother can't speak English -- she's just not a fluent English speaker. And who can blame the woman? She came to the U.S. when she was already in her thirties and while she took some ESL classes in the first few years of our immigrant life, she didn't have access later on when we moved to the South where there were less resources. Yet, despite such limitations, she picked up enough English to successfully co-own and run two small businesses with my father. Their customers, practically all of whom she had to communicate with in English, adored her. She remembered their names, their children, their celebrations and their sorrows. The customers loved to talk with her because she listened to them on their ground (a trait sorely lacking in my sister). So, is my mother's English less-than-perfect? Perhaps in my sister's eyes, but that has never stopped my mother from communicating.
Now, in regards to my mother not driving. Um, big effing deal. In all honesty, I don't drive. I learned to drive when I was in my late twenties and have always been a horrible driver. I had two car accidents and decided that the world was safer without me behind wheels (I notoriously once crashed a go-kart -- I guess that makes three accidents). And to expand on that truth, every single person in my family of origin is a horrible, bad driver. My father drives too slow, my brother drives too fast, my sister drives too fast and frequently stops paying attention while driving.
But to get back to the point, my sister refuses to accept what my mother said, namely that my sister is partly to blame for the rift between me and her. As my sister has written to me: "I am sorry. I don't know what I did so wrong that you are treating me wrong but let's forget it." The infamous non-apology of a narcissist. My sister doesn't care what she did wrong. More likely, she thinks she did nothing wrong. My mother and me -- we are to blame. I understand her blaming me but her blaming my mother. Wow. Just wow.
My sister also expands a great deal of effort on her blog on her own sorrow. Here are some choice tidbits:
I weigh my efforts to convey the depth of my sense of calamity. I have sobbed in front of her. I've talked to her of how I can no longer trust people, how I couldn't rely on anyone else to stay by my side when my own sister abandons me. I've told her how I'm persistently angry, how I cannot shake this feeling of betrayal. (Just baffling, I know, why her younger sister who she harassed with fourteen emails and five phone calls every single day, stalked, threatened with destruction of her possessions, threatened with commitment to a mental institution would choose to "betray" her. I know, my sister was soooo trusting. She trusted that she could act with impunity and that I would always, always be by her side... you know, because my role is to be the sidekick, the Tonto to her Lone Ranger, Nicole Richie to her Paris Hilton, Robin Hood to her Batman.)
I now feel like I live my hours on the verge of an impending crisis, of yet another breakdown. How one minor spurn, one signal of rejection, or one careless word is enough to spiral me into a hole of despair. How I feel more like a stranger here on earth, with few friends I feel I can turn to. How what I now see are inevitable doom, inescapable failure, impending betrayal. (Run for the hills! The apocalypse is coming!)
And I never thought to question whether they were worth it. That my family was worth whatever effort I put into it. That they were worth however much time I spent with them. That they were worth however much money I spent on them. (Let's just admit it. None of us, no one in her family of origin is worth the greatness that is my sister. I mean, we spent effort on her. We spent time with her. We even spent money on her -- although, in fairness, perhaps not as much as she given that she is married to a millionaire and spends his money on the family.)
I would also like to believe that her (our mother's) words came from a place that contains no malice, no ill-will, but from that crevice where we lack easy access to other words, to words of sympathy, words of understanding. I would like to think that I have the fortitude to withstand these words without suffering too many bruises.
Yes, that says it all. Because god forbid that your mother would ever expect you, as a grown child, to take responsibility for your own mistakes. What an awful, awful mother.
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