We decided to have a party for family for Katie’s sixth birthday. We decided to have it at the zoo in midtown because we always bought a season pass and their facilities for an impromptu picnic were very good.
Her paternal grandparents drove over from Marion, AR. Mother and Tom came from Collierville. We all joined up and looked for a good table to lay our our home-prepared spread and found one next to Monkey Island. It was a chilly and a bit windy but a beautiful day and I wanted it to be very special for Katie.
We all ate and had a piece of birthday cake. After about 45 minutes and the end of the meal, Mother jumped up and announced that they had to head back to Collierville. My dear mother-in-law, who was very defensive of me (and very intuitive with people) said, “Why do you have to leave so soon?” Mother uttered some inane thing about having something to do. And she and Tom left.
I know that nothing was said to offend either Mother or Tom. We were having a very nice lunch and everyone was talking about whatever. There were no words or anything said about anything controversial.
Mother always had a strange relationship with her third husband. From the very beginning, she had not wanted anyone to know that they had run across each other after years and were dating. They only dated four months before they decided to get married.
Mother even took great pleasure in her best friend being totally unaware of her new relationship with Tom. She had pulled the wool over all of our eyes and for that she was monumentally proud of herself.
Of course, empowered by her new relationship, she called me one morning to tell me that she was marrying Tom and that they wanted us to leave the house that we were renting from her, five weeks after we signed a one-year lease with her. While we were looking for a new place to live, she and Tom were consigned to live in her apartment, pity her. Honestly, this didn’t say much good about Tom, either.
Tom had a grand-daughter, H, that Mother was especially fond of. She lived in Collierville and was (somehow) married to a really nice guy, A, whose parents owned a large local company. They had a beautiful home in the older part of Collierville.
When Mother and Tom got married, my husband, Katie, and I dressed up, went to Collierville, and acted like normal human beings (AFTER Mother had put us out of the house and before we had found another place to live). We got along fine with Tom’s family. They were very nice and accommodating to us.
Tom and Mother were over at the H and A’s house all of the time either installing a closet, fixing the fence for the dogs, or any of a million other things. H had a membership at the Collierville YMCA and took Mother there. They shopped together. They travelled together. Mother went out of her way to be a part of their family.
Tom has a daughter, D, that is about the same age as his granddaughter, H. She was as different from H as she could be but I liked them both. D was a lot like me: very plain spoken and brutally honest. I had spoken with D on the telephone briefly while Mother and Tom were “engaged”. One day, I called D and told her that I honestly wanted to warn her about my mother and I laid it out for her, no secrets. I couldn’t let this man I knew very little about enter into this most important of all relationships without warning and I felt that D, of all people would understand my concern.
She did. She listened and she was very kind. She told me that her dad had been retired for years, lived in a tiny apartment on Highland Avenue near University of Memphis and “didn’t have a pot to piss in”. She knew that he seemed happy to be with Mother (i.e., not alone) and that they seemed much more financially secure with Mother’s retirement. So we parted closer friends and I felt better.
Since I had decided to stay home with Katie, we had a good life and plenty of money for our lifestyle but, of course, we were nowhere near the lifestyle of Tom’s family. Mother would go on and on about H and how beautiful her house was and all the things they did together. It was obvious that she was quite proud to be included in Tom’s family – and despised us. If they came for Christmas, Mother would bring obligatory presents for Katie. But she made it quite obvious that she was uncomfortable with us and couldn’t wait to get back to Tom’s family.
I had no problem with any of Tom’s relatives. They were quite nice and welcoming to us. When Tom died, Mother was close to them for about a year. Then they went on with their lives and dropped out of hers. A’s politically connected and successful father retired from the company and turned it over to A (an only child). D and her husband, an engineer, moved to North Carolina.
Tears and Catharsis 