My Big Happy Illusion

Photo by Heide Weidner

My Big Happy Illusion

Marlena Fiol

        I stared at the words on my computer screen.

        Dear Mom/Marlena and Dad/Ed,
        The following note was composed by all four of your children.
        The motivation to write this comes out of conversations we had
        during and after the recent visit at your house. … Each of us has
        been frustrated with the nature of our relationships with you.
 

        My husband stopped reading over my shoulder and began to stomp around our bedroom. “So that’s what they were all doing over by the pool while you and I were preparing their dinner and watching the grandkids? Back in my psychology training days, we would’ve called this triangulation. They were colluding behind our backs to build a collective case. And in our own home, too. Those ungrateful shits!”
        My body sank low into my chair, wanting to escape this moment. Just thinking about the family reunion three weeks ago still exhausted me. Our four adult children (two each from prior marriages), their partners and three grandchildren all had spent between four and ten days in our winter townhome in southern Arizona. Our peaceful space was crammed and we had arranged overflow sleeping at our neighbors. Fridges and freezers were bursting with food I’d prepared in advance: vegetarian tamales, which my son Andrew’s wife Amisha said she loved; spaghetti and meatballs, a sure hit for my daughter Olivia, with a vegetarian version for the no-meat people; and Indian rice and dal for the spice lovers. It was supposed to be a magnificent get-together of our big happy family. Although it didn’t turn out that way, until now I’d been unwilling to acknowledge what happened.

 

        I’d always loved family reunions. They reminded me of how fortunate I was to have my very own clan who thought I was important to them. Growing up in Paraguay, South America, where my parents were Mennonite missionaries, we kids never quite seemed to measure up to God’s work on the scale of relative importance. When I’m a parent I will get this right, I promised myself from a very young age. I was blessed with a loving husband and two children. But I got that one all wrong. We divorced after ten years.
        Then Ed and I got together, giving me a second chance. Between us we had four adult children. And then they found partners and had children of their own, and there were eleven. I had the opportunity to finally get this family thing right.
        “Blended families are challenging,” our friends said. To which I proudly responded, “Not ours. We had a few early bumps, but now we all get along really well.”
        I especially loved us all traveling together as a family. And Ed and I were happy to spend the many thousands of dollars to foot the travel bills in order to continue to solidify our family union.
        Typically a round robin of family emails determined a location for these trips. Once it was Mexico. And then Chile. But the best of all was Ireland. After we all agreed on a destination, I spent many hours poring over travel books and speaking with consultants, arranging all of our lodging in advance. In Ireland, our nine-person van bounced across the narrow cobblestone roads. We giggled our way through attempts at Irish step dancing alongside local musicians. We gulped down frothy mugs of Guinness for breakfast. We all agreed it was the best.
        Then came the Thailand trip in December of 2004.
        It was a bit more challenging than others to plan because my son Andrew and his India-born girlfriend Amisha (who was traveling with us for the first time) were living in India at the time. The rest of us came from the U.S. But after months of lots of back-and-forth emails and hours of planning, we were all set.
        Andrew and Amisha were at the Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok when our flight from the U.S. landed at 10:00 p.m.
        We knew by the look on their faces that something was terribly wrong.
        “A massive tsunami hit Thailand today,” Andrew said in a low voice. “Koh Phi Phi may not even exist at this point.” Koh Phi Phi was a tiny island off Thailand’s west coast where we planned to spend our first week together before heading inland to Chiang Mai. I’d dreamed of us eating, swimming, bar hopping and getting Thai massages.
        At first I thought it was one of Andrew’s jokes I was often vulnerable enough to believe. But then I saw the panicked crowds around us.
        “What do we do now?” Olivia asked. I noticed our children’s wide, blank eyes all turned toward Ed and me.
        From somewhere deep inside of me, that place that had often shown up in times of crisis in my life, a strong voice said, “It’s OK. After staying at the airport hotel tonight as planned we’ll see a travel agent and come up with a new plan.”
        Following my lead, we marched forward with our vacation, choosing to spend the week on the beaches of Koh Samui on the eastern coast of Thailand.
        After we settled into our hotel rooms, excited to explore the Koh Samui area, Ed and I knocked on doors. “Who’s up for a scooter ride?”
        Olivia and her partner, eyes bright with anticipation, gave us a thumbs-up. I knocked on Andrew’s door.
        They sat at the end of their bed, heads bent.
        “Maybe later, Mom,” he said. More than an hour passed. We checked out the grounds, unpacked our suitcases and sat awkwardly outside of Andrew and Amisha’s room. Waiting.
        Finally, Andrew emerged. “Amisha isn’t up for scooter riding just now,” he said.
        I raised my eyebrows, but he didn’t seem to notice, turning back to his room.
        A few nights later, Ed and I thought it would be fun to eat dinner right on the beach. The rough-hewn wooden table was loaded high with steaming dishes of Gaeng Daeng, Pad Thai and Gaeng Keow.
        “Where are Andrew and Amisha?” Olivia asked, pointing to the two empty chairs.
        I walked back toward their room and spotted them off in a corner of the courtyard, sitting on a bench. Andrew had his arms around Amisha, who was sobbing.
        “What’s wrong?”
        “It’s OK, Mom. Go ahead and eat without us. We’ll be there soon,” he said.
        I felt blood rush into my face. Hot, sour blood. How dare she ruin our vacation, the vacation we’d spent so much money and time on?

 

        The night before we all separated to travel back to our respective homes, Andrew slipped a note under our hotel room door: Thank you for the trip. I’m sorry we didn’t have more time to connect.
        I stared at the piece of paper. My hands shook. My heart pounded. Yeah, well, whose fault was that? I thought, crumpling it into a tight wad.
        And then I made the Big Mistake that no amount of apologizing has been able to undo. I wrote, I’m sorry, too, that we didn’t have time to connect. Amisha is high maintenance, as are Ed and I in our relationship. It adds a level of burden, but it can be worth the effort. I hope it is for you.
Your words about Amisha were unkind, Mom, said the response signed by both of them. You’re insecure. But don’t take it out on Amisha.
        That was our last trip together as a family.

                                                                * * *
        Now, thirteen years later, reading the e-mail signed by all four of our children and seeing my husband’s rigid jaw, I remembered the relief I felt when I dropped the last of our family off at the Tucson airport. “Everything’s all right. I’m just worn out,” I’d muttered to myself as I pulled away from the terminal. I couldn’t face even the possibility that it was freeing to get rid of them all.
        Words tumbled out of my mouth. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, Ed. I know you said right after they all left how happy you were that they were gone. I just couldn’t bring myself to admit that, but you’re right.” Sobs welled up from deep in my lower belly. “The visit wasn’t any fun for any of us, was it?”
        We were still staring at the original e-mail on my computer screen when another one popped in, this one from my son Andrew. I just need to communicate to you in writing, Mom, because you feel threatened, you treat Amisha inconsistently.
        There it was again. His catchall explanation: You feel threatened, Mom.
        I began to remember details about the recent visit and turned to my husband, who was still stomping around in angry circles. “Amisha did seem really stiff and unhappy during the visit, and Olivia often had a protective arm around her shoulder. What was that about? And did you see how the two of them locked themselves into the bedroom with the baby, and when I knocked on the door, they said, “Not now, Mom.” Bent over in my chair, I buried my face in both hands, feeling suddenly too raw to continue.
        After a few hours of enraged ranting, interspersed with moments of silent tears, Ed and I typed a response: We are angry and sad.
        Delete.
        We are deeply saddened. We leave it up to each of you to come to us.
        Pause.
        Let’s have a true dialogue that includes self-reflections about your own as well as our responsibility for how we got here.
        Almost immediately, a response flashed in from Andrew. Again, the same accusation: You feel threatened by Amisha and mistreat her. I take responsibility for not communicating this a long time ago.
        Ed began to sputter. I shrank even lower into my chair. “Why does he keep repeating that tired old phrase? Is that all he’s got? And is this his idea of a responsible dialogue?”
        He pounded on his computer keys: This has to stop.
        It stopped.
        Ed’s daughter called a few days later. “You play favorites, Dad, and I’m at the bottom of the heap. You act like you don’t love me as much as the other kids.”
        “But we love you just as much,” Ed said, his shoulders sagging, not knowing what more to say. All her life, even before our blended family, she had communicated feeling less loved than others.
        She stopped calling and so did we.
        Shortly thereafter, we met with my daughter Olivia near her home at a Café Yumm in Eugene, Oregon. The brightly colored ceramic bowls filled with rice, beans, avocado and tomatoes contrasted with the darkness of our mood. My girl’s big blue eyes, normally so full of love, glared from across the table. She was on fire as I had never seen her.
        “You intrude too much into the way we’re raising our boys. We want you to remember that we are their parents. You need to back off. If you can’t handle their behavior, then maybe you need to spend less time with them.” I felt fire spreading across my face. Of all the things our children found unacceptable about us, this one made sense even to me. We knew we’d been wrong to complain to them about their sons’ disruptive behavior at our house the prior Christmas, like hurling food they didn’t like across the room and throwing screaming fits at bedtime.
        We’d already apologized numerous times, but I said, “We’re sorry we meddled when we shouldn’t have, Olivia. I always said I wouldn’t interfere with your parenting. We made a mistake.”
        In a tight staccato, she said, “You feel threatened, Mom, and that makes you treat us badly.”
        “What do you mean, I feel threatened?” I noticed how high and thin my voice sounded. Almost like I felt threatened, damn it. I’d heard the same accusation enough times that it no longer carried much of a punch. But for the first time, I saw what I had refused to see. Something, deep down, really did feel terrifyingly threatening about what I saw happening in my family. The circle of perfection I had drawn around all of us, the many promises I’d made to myself that I would do this family thing right, were all crumbling before me.
        I stared at the food I hadn’t touched in my bright purple Yumm bowl. “I’m sorry, Mom,” Olivia said. I met her eyes. Most of the fire had gone out and in them I saw reflected my own deep sadness.
        A year following the disastrous get-together in Tucson, our kids organized their own family reunion on the Oregon coast. We knew nothing about it until we saw their smiling pictures on Facebook. And a year after that, they arranged another family vacation without us, this time in Mexico. Again, Facebook displayed their happy-family photos.

 

        Parental estrangement is common today. According to a list made by ranker.com, numerous famous actors, actresses and musicians have been estranged from their parents, among them Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie, Eminem, Kate Hudson, Drew Barrymore, Christina Aguilera, Demi Lovato, Adele, Tracy Morgan and Kelly Rowland. These stories have made the headlines.
        Most of our stories aren’t told. Dr. Joshua Coleman, author of Helping Parents Heal: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don’t Get Along, calls parental estrangement a “silent epidemic” because so many of us are ashamed to admit we’ve lost meaningful contact with our grown children.
        I am. Ashamed.
        I never imaged it could happen to me.

 

        Our children are good people in the world outside of our family. And despite mistakes we surely have made as parents, we are unaware of having committed any serious crimes against them. Dr. Coleman describes parental estrangement this way: “This is not a story of adult children cutting off parents who made egregious mistakes. It’s about parents… who made mistakes that were certainly within normal limits.” I would add that it also isn’t usually a story about evil adult children. Why then the epidemic?
        Demographers Strauss and Howe point to potentially telling generational features. Our children are Gen Xers, born in the 1960s and 1970s, during arguably the greatest anti-child phase in modern American history, underscored by legalized abortion, invention of the birth control pill, absent fathers, working mothers and latchkey kids. Sometimes cast as perpetual adolescents, they have turned to social media to find their voice, especially Facebook, where, according to Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist on Fox News, they “can fool themselves into thinking they have hundreds or thousands of ‘friends.’ They can delete unflattering comments. They can block anyone who disagrees with them or pokes holes in their inflated self-esteem.” Have we as a society failed this generation, and now wonder why they block or even delete us from their lives?
        I also wonder, are we, their aging parents, living too long? Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal, describes the impact that increased longevity has had on the relationships between parents and their adult children. “Traditionally, surviving parents provided a source of much-needed security, advice, and economic protection…. But once parents were living markedly longer lives, tension emerged … the traditional family became less a source of security than a struggle for control.”
        As I replay the e-mails and conversations from four years ago, I catch glimpses of my role in that struggle for control, a woman desperately holding onto a seemingly stable system to keep it from falling apart. It is only now, after seeing it shatter, that I begin to understand the burden my big-happy-family illusion placed on me and on other family members. No one could live up to that illusion. Not they. Not I. As one of my teachers, Richard Rohr, has said, “Perfectionism … makes ordinary love largely impossible.” Is it any wonder I came across as threatened and insecure every time a crack appeared in the image of my perfect family?
 
 
                                                                * * *
        We are gradually re-building the broken trust with our children, most of us learning to be a little more compassionate about and tolerant of each other’s numerous imperfections. Ed’s son and his partner have welcomed us back into their lives, as have Olivia and her husband with their two boys. Just recently, after we listed our Oregon McKenzie River home for sale, a place where we have lived for sixteen years, we received a note from Olivia’s husband: It is an incredible space that you and Ed created and shared with so many people. There were countless great meals, fireside chats, river adventures, “best Christmas trees ever,” badminton battles, deck discussions, and Wii hours spent at “the river house.” I am grateful to you and Ed for providing years of very special memories. And Olivia added, Thanks for always sharing yourselves “wholely.” You are both special, irreplaceable and without a doubt loved more than you know.
 
        About a year ago, Ed and I even got to spend two hours at the Children’s Museum in Cincinnati with Andrew and his then 3-year-old daughter, whom we hadn’t seen since she was a baby. She wore these adorable green and blue-checkered rubber boots. What she loved most was wading through the museum’s mass of vibrant and colorful plastic pit balls.
        I followed the loving gaze of my son as he watched his daughter throw herself with abandon into the bright sea of balls, confident that she could do this. At first she managed to get it right and stay on top of them, but then she stumbled and fell into the unstable jumble, only to pull herself up and begin all over again.