Meeting Flower

I keep thinking I’ll find something eloquent to say about this, but I should just give up. Put this down (it’s one of two emotional hurdles that I need to write about and get out of the way before I can return to topical blogging, I fear) and move on.

So Friday night, I went out for dinner with Dad and Flower.

This is what I knew about her before the evening:

1. She is from North Carolina.
2. She is a military widow with a son who moved here, which is why she moved here.
3. She is (according to my SIL) “nothing like mom.”

All those things are true, though I don’t know a whole lot more about her after spending the evening with her, and one of the things I do know is disturbing.

Brief etiquette suggestion: if you ever find yourself tempted, in your first meeting with someone you don’t know but with whom you are at risk of having to spend holidays in the future, to say, “It might make me sound __________ [negative adjective], but ______________ [statement that substantiates the first, hypothetical assertion],” just don’t fill in that first blank. Because although you are being honest, yes, the negative adjective will apply to you — after all, you applied to yourself — and it will be very hard for your listener to get that out of her brain afterward.

In the end, two relatively paradoxical things are true:

1. The fact that Dad is interested in spending time with her is a positive for me, in particular, the fact that he is willing to eat what she cooks. When left to feed himself, Dad starves. When I cook things he wants to eat, Dad is reminded of Mom. (There may also be a component of eating at the same table that enters into this for him.) When I cook things I like to eat, especially foreign foods, he’s not interested. I guess that, as a southern cook, she makes things that are sufficiently attractive to him not to alienate him, but also sufficiently unfamiliar that they don’t remind him of mom.
2. It’s frustrating to watch him do things for her that he would not do for Mom / me / us. (Trying new foods is only a synecdoche for a much larger elephant that I don’t feel like talking about at the moment.) I know that every marriage involves its own power relationships. I know that he is lonely and he needs a person and that that need will motivate him to act in ways that are different than he would if Mom were still alive. This particular issue also doesn’t impact me all that negatively (as it means I don’t have to cook for him or worry about what he eats). But the philosophical problem persists.

In the end, Flower is also a lonely old person. For whatever reason, Dad enjoys spending time with her and is willing to do things that are necessary for that to work out. This is positive for both of them (and, my conflicts notwithstanding) for me. That is all it has to be.

I’m glad the meeting is over, anyway.

~ by Servetus on January 26, 2016.