I have a lot of catch-up to do with y’all. It’s been pretty busy around here the last couple of weeks. I seriously contemplated doing my Thursday Thirteen last week on all the developments around here, but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have believed the list. At least not without explanation. So, in order to catch you up, yet not take up your whole day, I’m breaking this up into parts.
As you know, Oldest Son is back at home as of two weeks ago this past Thursday. The previous Sunday, he came over here and spent the day to avoid fighting with the girlfriend. While he was here, he got a MySpace message from my BFF Kelli’s daughter, almost a Second Daughter to me, who he’d been thick-as-thieves friends with since he was 3 and she was 2. They lost track of each other as BFF Kelli and I went separate ways job-wise and they entered their teen years, but every now and then one would ask about the other through BFF Kelli and I. She’d been messaging him off and on since she had her baby in February, but he hadn’t been responding because he figured there was no point as the girlfriend would never put up with him communicating with a friend from his past – particularly one that was female. He had enough trouble maintaining friendships with the guys he knew – he didn’t really need to add more fuel to the fire.
Fed up with the crazy relationship with the girlfriend, over the summer he’s been making noise about wishing the baby would hurry up and be born so he could find out it wasn’t his and get away from her. He has great reason to be suspicious that he’s not the father, despite the protests to the contrary by the girlfriend. We can all do math, and let me just say, his stepmom and I decided to wait until AFTER the baby is born to have a baby shower. Yeah. It’s like that.
From her mom, I knew that Second Daughter had her own crazy relationship she was dealing with, but I didn’t share this with Oldest Son. Nevermind his own situation, if he knew that Second Daughter was being treated badly by some idiot, he’d have mounted the white horse and rode in to the rescue, invited, or not. He’s loyal and extremely protective, that one, but he has enough drama in his own life, I figured. Besides, he needed to concentrate on saving himself, first.
So, Second Daughter calls me to ask if it would be ok to bring the baby by to see all of us, and I said, “Of course!” So, she did. She and Oldest Son spent the afternoon and evening swapping stories of their teen years and not-as-subtly-as-either-of-them-thought checking the other one out. The conclusion come to by each of them (told separately to me while I bit the inside of my cheek to keep a nonchalant look on my face) was, “Damn! He/She is FINE!”
So, Thursday when the girlfriend told Oldest Son to get his shit and get out – he did so calmly, coolly and collectedly (a first, I might add) and moved home. On Sunday, Second Daughter came over to visit again, this time without the baby. By this time, the girlfriend is calling every three hours wanting to know why he hasn’t come home yet, and for the first time, he tells her he’s not coming back. He’s had enough of being tossed out every time he turns around and if the baby is his, she can expect child support and visitation, but that’s it. He’s done with her.
So what’s the girlfriend do? Takes a bunch of Xanax pills and lands her butt in the hospital. Yeah – 8 months pregnant. She really freaks out when this does not bring Oldest Son running to the hospital. She continues the phone calls over the next couple of days until Oldest Son hands me his phone and says, “Will you please answer this and explain to her that the only phone call I’m interested in is the one that says come give us a DNA sample?”
That stopped the phone calls – temporarily.
Meanwhile, Second Daughter’s situation is heating up as she’s recognizing (like Oldest Son is) that someone she hasn’t seen in years treats her better than the father of her child who claims he loves her but has systematically alienated both sides of her family (her mom and dad are divorced) and does things like lock her and their baby in the bathroom to keep her from leaving him.
Oh yeah, BFF Kelli has reason for the venom that drips from her words when she speaks of this jerk. But we both realize that we can’t really do much but hope that having reconnected will give each of our children a different, more positive perspective on who they are and what they’re worth, and by extension, what they’re willing to put up with or call happiness. We laugh and wonder out loud, like we used to, if we’ll end up related someday. We joke and say we should introduce the Jerk to the Girlfriend and solve all our problems.
…to be continued…
