My mother’s coming down for a family therapy session today with me and Robbie. We’ve been pretty much estranged for the last ten years since my dad went ballistic on Thanksgiving back in 1991. Robbie and I insisted that we sit down with a therapist or a priest to hash out the issues but my dad refused to do it, so there’s only been limited contact between our family and my parents since then. The day my dad died, I asked my mother what she wanted to do now that he was gone and she said she wanted to get back together as a family.
Robbie’s really dreading this, fearing that having my mother back involved with us will adversely affect our relationship. It gets more complicated because my sister is estranged from my mother as well.
I have this tendency to try to be the peacemaker in my family. I remember asking my father why he was so mean to my mother. I must have been about ten years old. He told me that I didn’t see all the ways that she was mean to him, that she was just sneaky about it. I also remember him berating me for not trying to stop a physical fight between my mom and my sister. I did try the next time, and failed miserably.
So who knows what I might learn today.