Casual Update

Nothing important to relate tonight, just a casual update on anything that comes to mind.

It rained today. Finally! It's been almost a month since the last rain. Per the weather radio, parts south of Mayfield may have been hit with a severe thunderstorm. We had a lot of grumbling thunder and a few minutes of rain in the afternoon. Must have gotten worse as it headed west to Mayfield. Later this evening we've had a bit of "Mother" rain - a nurturing kind of rain.

Tonight when I put Mother to bed she told me with much emotion that she loved me. She did that last night. It brought home something about both of my parents that always bothered me once I matured enough to see it - they both did or now equate gratitude with love.

Neither of them ever really enjoyed me, especially after I became a person instead of a child they could easily boss around. They could never get the knack of enjoying talking to me. They never enjoyed teaching me politics, socializing, how to live with others, how to get along in the world just through chatting with me about my day, my activities, my friends. It's almost like they expected me to know everything without having anything taught to me.

When I was a teenager, they conveyed that everything I thought and every friend I had was stupid. Well, as teenagers go, they were right a lot of the time. I did some pretty stupid stuff. But still in all, your teenagers are people, and their thought processes need to be nurtured.  All they ever did was slice and dice.

As I matured, exited teenage years and became a young adult, they still didn't enjoy me, and it seemed they went out of their way to make everyone that came into the house uncomfortable. Silent signals, silent stresses, silent condemnation. Nothing was ever fun. No one was valuable, cute in their naivete, funny, precocious, or promising as an individual.

When I finally got sick of all this and tried to leave home, their method of handling things was money - a shopping trip for school clothes, which was spent, I later felt, to keep me close to home and community college rather than spent on a fairly nearby college and dorm fees.

After a few years of stumbling around and my making a general mash-up of my life, instead of spending money on making sure I got back in college and finished my degree, their solution was to buy me a house in Arlington as a surprise. Like I really wanted to live where they could continue to watch and oversee every action I made.

I fled. After that, they treated me like a stranger. My father never called on the phone, ever, not once. They never wanted to talk to me just to talk to me. Every now and then Mother would accuse me of not having a telephone because she'd tried to call and couldn't get through. Sorry. I never ever had my phone cut off from not paying a bill, nor never ever didn't have a phone. Only my mother wrote a few letters. The only way they ever showed affection was in extravagant Christmas gifts.

Nowadays if my Mother is having a good day where she's somewhat aware of the care I'm giving her, she tells me she loves me. What she should say is that she's grateful I'm caring for her.

Or am I the idiot because I don't equate love with gratitude? Gratitude can increase love, but you can be grateful to a lot of people without loving them.

Ack, enough.