The art of forgiveness

I don’t know if I ever men­tioned on here the some­what rocky rela­tion­ship I have had with Wal’s par­ents.  It’s not some­thing I like to talk about because well, it was too painful.  It’s not easy accept­ing the fact that the par­ents of the man you love, the man you moved thou­sands of miles to be with wants noth­ing to do with you. It’s even more painful to say out loud that they want noth­ing to do with their grand­child. That year after year had gone by and they’ve never laid eyes on her.  That they missed her birth, chris­ten­ing, birth­days and  Christ­mases.  While my par­ents would give up their right arms to have the chance to spend time with Squidge Wal’s par­ents shunned us.  Wal would head over to visit them once a month.  I would sug­gest he take Squidge with him. The usual reply would be a joke and a laugh. Year after year and still no inter­ac­tion until one night I’d had enough.  Wal and I got into an argue­ment about some­thing long for­got­ten but it ended with me giv­ing him an ulta­ma­tum– either he took Squidge to see his par­ents or Squidge and I would move to Amer­ica.  I had some­how turned it into a lack of respect for Squidge and I. That it was an insult to us that this was allowed to go on as long as it had.  I know, can you believe I said that? I think I just had enough. I missed my fam­ily.  It was a doozy of a fight!

A few weeks later I posted our Christ­mas card to them.  Soon after that Wal bun­dled up a 4 1/2 yr old Squidge and headed over to see them for the first time. I was sick to my stom­ach with worry. I didn’t know if she would slam the door in their faces. I didn’t know if she’d be hor­ri­ble and say hor­ri­ble things to and about my baby girl!  The entire time they were away I paced and wor­ried. A few hours later they came back and Wal said it went fine. Amaz­ingly so. It was a  bit awk­ward at first but that was to be expected. She greeted them like noth­ing had hap­pened, as if she hadn’t missed almost 5 years of Squidge’s life. I thought OK the woman is insane but for Squidge I’m going to encour­age this rela­tion­ship. I would rather she have a rela­tion­ship with her than not. I grew up in a large extended fam­ily. I know and grew up with and played with all of my first cousins. I was close to most of my sec­ond cousins. I am aware of and keep up to date with 3rd and 4th cousins. In other words fam­ily is impor­tant to me so I was will­ing to put up with her crazy atti­tude for Squidge’s sake.  That was Decem­ber 2010.

Fast-forward to May 2012 and the trans­for­ma­tion is mind bog­gling.  Squidge vis­its a cou­ple of times a month, depend­ing on Wal’s travel sched­ule. She ply’s Squidge with enough choco­late and ice cream to sink a ship. She clips and saves things from the news­pa­per she thinks might be of inter­est to me or to Squidge. When Squidge had her bal­let show in March she came to the mati­nee show and acted like we see each other all the time. It was bizarre. A cou­ple of weeks ago Wal’s father had an oper­a­tion and the three of us went down to the hos­pi­tal to pick him up and drop him off at home. Our car broke down on the way home from the hos­pi­tal and we got a tow to his par­ents house. I hadn’t seen her… them in a months (years but for the brief time at Squidge’s bal­let show) and was a bit ner­vous show­ing up at her house. I shouldn’t have been. The woman’s abil­ity to delude her­self is strong. You’d have thought we were the best of friends the way she was car­ry­ing on.  I just rolled with it, although I did throw Wal some WTF glances his way.  The fol­low­ing day we all headed back down to his par­ents house again w/ the parts we needed to repair his car. I brought some cake and she made some tea.  While Simon fixed his car we three girls flew a kite, Squidge and Grandma Audrey kicked a foot­ball around and played hide and seek. It was a fun after­noon. An after­noon we wouldn’t have had if I had got­ten defen­sive and nasty and not allowed Squidge to have a rela­tion­ship with her grand­mother. I’m glad I took the high road. I’m glad I didn’t allow my feel­ings for the woman to get in the way of their rela­tion­ship.  I’ve said all along I don’t care, need or want a rela­tion­ship with the crazy old bat woman but I do want Squidge to have a rela­tion­ship with her. It’s amaz­ing what a dif­fer­ent 18 months make!

I’m glad.