Choke on Your Bitchy Pudding

My second post-divorce Christmas was simultaneously a success and my worst nightmare. My children were gloriously surprised and pleased with their presents. My brother was tickled to see everyone so happy with their gifts. Then there was my mother…the Grinch ain’t got nothing on her. She gives being a Christmas bitch a new name…

Let’s start with the gift she got from my brother.

His first mistake was of thinking to get her a present in the first place. I learned many years ago that it is totally pointless and completely un-satisfying to get my mother a present because she is the most ungrateful gift recipient. She complains if she gets something she didn’t want, openly telling you that she would have rather you gave her the money of it’s monetary value so she could then buy herself something she would rather have.

I wasn’t going to get her a present, but decided to get her something off the clearance rack at the last moment, just so the kids wouldn’t wonder how come grandma didn’t have a present under the tree. They could hardly understand when they are awash in gifts that their grandmother is an ungrateful git and she makes giving her a present a real pain in the ass. Safe bet, I will be returning it promptly (key word:return.) I will not exchange it. Bump that. She doesn’t want it, she doesn’t get anything! I am not playing her games, call me cruel,  I don’t care.

It all started when I was little…

You know those little things kids make their parents in school to show how much they love them, and how the kids expect that their parent will keep it and display it in a place of prominence? Yeah… my mom didn’t do that. She threw the shit I gave her straight in the trash. I long ago steeled my heart from the pain of seeing my tiny offerings in the trash the next day after I had slaved on the project expecting to see the delight in her eyes, and instead saw only disappointment and fake acceptance of the gift. I would fish those items out of the trash, and only once did I confront her. Only once because after seeing her lame attempts at an excuse and then how she just gave up and then told me that she didn’t need to keep trash around the house, I stopped trying to give her anything and I am not a glutton for punishment. I did not wish to have that experience repeated.

So began the life long effort to NOT give my mother presents of any kind.

And then she wonders why I didn’t buy her presents for her birthday, for Mother’s Day or for Christmas? Well that is why. The only thing I ever would give her was flowers. Flowers are perfect because they DIE and she would have to throw them away. Seeing those in the trash isn’t going to break my heart or tear my spirit into a million little tiny pieces for her to stomp on with her selfish disdain.

So imagine my non-surprise when the present that my brother gets for her arrives in the mail and the first thing she tells me to do after he returns home to his apartment was that I shouldn’t throw away the box it came in because she intends to return it. OMG! For real? After she harassed him for over an hour over his shoulder as he picked it out WITH HER from the internet! I told him he shouldn’t bother to get her the gift. For one, she has ALWAYS been picky as hell, pickier than she had any right to be.

Second, I knew what she preferred and it wasn’t what my brother had in mind. Why? Because she is old and stuck in the past. She needs to make like Frozen and LET IT GO… but she can’t. She doesn’t like change and for her, if there was ever anything she has coveted that someone else had, it doesn’t matter if it takes her 19 years to get it, she will get it and that thing exactly. Not one like it, not something better… nope. That exact model. Why? Who the hell knows.

She started the day in good form. The kids wake up super early and super excited. Mind you it wasn’t that early. My son got me out of bed with the superb logic that it was no earlier than I wake up every other weekday when I am not on vacation. True enough. I couldn’t combat that logic. So up I got. What does she do? Attempt to manipulate them with some nonsense that the real meaning of Christmas was to respect your elders and they should show it by letting her keep sleeping and not ask her to get up and join the family on Christmas morning. Really? I must have missed that portion in the bible…

This from the woman that every other day this week she was the first one up AND would make such a racket so as to wake up other people so she wouldn’t be the only person awake? Wow. Good one mom. I got her up, told her it was Christmas and that she was being selfish attempting to ruin their enthusiasm with her sudden desire to sleep in. Later on she added an extra helping of ludicrous reasoning by calling me an atheist just because I wouldn’t side with her in her tirade that the kids would have been better off letting all of us sleep in more before opening their presents. Thanks, mom. That wasn’t uncalled for AT ALL.

The next moment of excellence in bitchy achievements came mid-afternoon once the wreckage from the unwrap was cleared away. She sat on the couch and began crying, sniffling quietly and responding with “nothing” when we would ask her what was wrong! Turns out that there was nothing wrong other than she was mad that no one was paying her any attention because OMG—they were playing with their Christmas presents! And why shouldn’t we? Her response to being confronted with the ludicrousness of her behavior: She is miserable and won’t be happy until everyone is miserable right along with her and she doesn’t care if she looks like a hypocrite in the process. 

What a real mature attitude to adopt on this holiday!

What reason has anyone who is healthy and surrounded by family, to be unhappy? In comparison to the real world problems being suffered by hundreds of thousands around the world, her problems (real or imagined) are minor in comparison. I would prefer if she could just stop dwelling on herself for half a second and enjoy herself surrounded by the family she spends so much time “missing” when she is away.

Diagnosis: She’s got First World Problems.

Just more of the same with my crazy mother.  The drama will all be over soon enough once she goes back home. That’s a present I will definitely appreciate.