I really think Sean is getting better at communicating with me every day. The smiles and laughter are definitely not a fluke — they just keep coming, mostly in the mornings, when he’s at his most awake and happiest. He is getting fussier and clingier during the days; this is a new thing, which means I’m not getting much done except for sitting on the couch. I can’t just leave him alone in his crib to nap for even a few minutes. And he’s gone backward at night a little, too, waking up to feed twice instead of once, which is disappointing. After I thought we had established that great 10-2-6 schedule too! I guess he’s showing me that he’s not going to be predictable.
One new thing he’s doing is letting me know when he wants to eat or suck on his pacifier. He looks straight at me and sticks his tongue out just a little, repetitively. I know this is not coincidence. He is learning how to tell me stuff. He becomes more of a person every day.
So when V. was here on Monday, she asked about my dad, and I kind of went off on him a little. My dad has been frustrating me for several months now. He is so withdrawn and, I think, cocooned in his own little world that I find it extremely offputting. He came by to visit once, to bring his girlfriend to see Sean, but he didn’t really visit; instead, he just prowled around the house. Now he’s hinting at me coming out to see him, which I don’t particularly want to do, and I feel very guilty about that. There are several reasons why I don’t want to go out there. 1) It’s a long drive, especially for what would probably be a short visit. 2) They are always sick over there, and I don’t want Sean catching anything. 3) The house is dirty. I’m sorry, but it is, and it’s been bugging me for a while. 4) He’s still smoking, and I don’t want smoking around Sean. I just don’t want to bring Sean into that atmosphere right now.
I couldn’t tell my dad any of these things without seriously hurting his feelings. Anyone’s feelings would be hurt, but to tell you the truth, he is a bit more sensitive than a lot of people. For instance, I feel like I can be straight with my mom and have an honest talk with her, and even if there were hurt feelings, we could talk it out; that’s the kind of relationship we’ve developed. But then again, she is happy to come visit me and is comfortable in my house, and she also understands what it’s like to have a young baby to take care of. She gives me latitude to grow into my comfort zone with Sean, and she respects my decisions. But if I am at all critical about my dad or the way he lives, he gets very affronted and takes it extremely personally.
Our relationship has been strained the past year anyway, because he has been drinking more and isolating himself. I have not enjoyed visiting him at all for a long time. He had a minor stroke a couple of months ago, and that seemed to have woken him up some; last time I saw him, he had stopped drinking, for instance (but was still smoking). Still, the residual issues remain, and I feel very impatient with him. I want him to be more like a dad and a grandfather, and less like a moody, depressed, self-involved hermit.
The other thing that’s been irritating me about him is his insistence that I bring Sean to visit my grandmother soon. Granted, he has backed off on that. My relationship with my grandmother is not at all good; for my part, to be truthful, it’s nonexistent. She is a cold, hard-to-please woman who has never shown me or my brother a lot of warmth and who has always been very critical of my whole family. Now that she has moved into the assisted living area, she has become severely depressed and decided (and told everyone) that she wants to die. It bugs me that my dad and his siblings have all accepted this, instead of advocating for her to get anti-depression medication and have more socialization. She is not really sick, just old, and there’s no reason to think she’s going to die anytime soon. But they enable her depression, and my dad actually gets upset with the nursing home staff for trying to make her join the other residents for meals. He thinks it is her right to be miserable, instead of seeing that she needs treatment, which might actually help her. The whole situation angers me, and I just want to divorce myself from it.
Here is what I do not want to do. I don’t want to bring Sean to visit her until he’s a little older and his immune system is stronger. A nursing home is also a germ-friendly place. And I don’t want to have to drive all the way to Pittsboro to pick my dad up, then drive to Raleigh to see my grandmother, then do the whole trip back with Sean. That’s at least 3-4 hours in the car, and I don’t want to do that to Sean. Also, I want M. with me, at least initially.
It is hard for me to stand up to my dad and insist on what I want, but I know I’m going to have to start doing it soon, and damn the consequences. He has already said to me that he wants grandmother to see Sean before she dies, as if she’s at death’s door! My other grandmother died last year, so I know the difference. When I said I wanted to wait because I was worried about Sean getting sick, he said I’d have to expose Sean to germs sometime. Sure, I know that, but as I told him, at this young age, if Sean gets a fever, that means 3 days in the hospital. Which means a huge expense, a lot of stress for M. and me, lost work for M., unnecessary stress and pain for Sean — a gigantic ordeal that I would like to avoid by any means I can. If that means standing up to my father and hurting my relatives’ feelings to wait until I feel it’s the appropriate time, then that’s what I’m gong to do.
