I have a daughter that I loved so much and she went away. While she was gone, she became a different person;someone I don't know. After 11 years of near silence, she arrived back at home and stayed for two months. I didn't know what to say to her, I was afraid of her.
I've been walking on egg shells for the past two months. We pass each other in the house, she going into the kitchen and me going out. We exchange pleasantries, but anything deeper than that causes hostility, resentment and anger.
She's a veteran now after having served in the Navy for almost 10 years. She will talk about Navy things and the carrier. She'll tell you about the young Navy kids she trained and scared to death. She'll swear like a sailor and tell you how she will defend her little brother by kicking anyone's a** who comes near him. Finally she'll tell you how they discharged her from the Navy for being over the physical weight standards for too long.
She's full of anger. She's full of the kind of anger that rears its ugly head at unexpected moments, like when you're trying to have a meaningful conversation about some important issue and BAMM..you get shot down, told that your suggestions, advice, thoughts are not welcome. I don't know what my role is. Is my only purpose to provide a cheap place to live, to hang out ? Then there's the issue of money. She doesn't have much. She asked me if she could borrow some money to send to her ex...to pay for my granddaughter's health insurance. I said sure, as long as you pay me back. She needed to go back to California so she could work on getting physical custody of her daughter, but she didn't have the money to pay for the ticket. She asked me if I could pay for the ticket and I said yes, and I expect to be paid back, While she was at it, she used my credit card to pay her phone bill and didn't ask me about that at all. I don't know now if I will ever see any of the money I lent her.
She won't talk to me except to ask for money. She tells everything to her "Daddy". She tells Daddy that I am judgmental, that I talk to people about her and she doesn't like that. She wants everything to be private. I'm not sure what her level of privacy even means. It feels like she is trying to hide some deep, dark secrets. I have been wondering about those secrets since her daughter was born . Why have I never been allowed to speak to Precious Girl's other grandmother, who has taken care of her since she was born? Precious Girl is a beautiful, well behaved little girl. I know her other grandmother loves her and takes good care of her. Why have I been kept away? I would have loved to have had a conversation about how Precious Girl's doing and was there anything I could help with. But I was never allowed. My daughter refused to give me her mother in laws phone number and so almost seven years have passed in silence.
She's gone back to California now. She says she wants to bring her daughter here, to Texas. I would love to be a part of my granddaughter's life, but I feel in my heart like its not going to happen. I don't think my daughter can live here with me, with her Dad, without fracturing the very essence of who I am, who I know myself to be. She wants to be here with us for all the wrong reasons; so that she can live cheaply and use her GI bill housing money to buy a car and insurance, so that we can help her out at her beck and calling. She is not able to acknowledge that we might have some experience, some wisdom,some common sense advice that would go a long way toward helping her get herself into a better situation, Worst of all, God forbid that anyone would imply that she has been a less than stellar parent. Somehow, in her mind, she has made it so that all the reasons for not raising her daughter herself, all the reasons for not even seeing her daughter much over the past year since she's been out of the Navy; everything is justified.
We gave her the best of everything we had. We stayed in Honduras for an six extra months in order to complete her adoption and immigration paperwork. We vowed we wouldn't leave Honduras if we couldn't get her paperwork signed. She was welcomed to the USA by loving grandparents who went out of their way to make sure she had everything they could offer, She was part of our family, the oldest of 5 children. Although she never excelled at school, she excelled at being social and having friends, Adults at church loved her; kids loved her and would flock to her. Our priest at church was so impressed with her that he wanted to encourage her to think about going to seminary. It seems like a long time ago,so long that I have trouble remembering her sweetness anymore. I want to remember her the way she was, not the way she is now. It sounds like I am living in a fantasy world, that I can't accept who she has become. It's because I can't yet see who she has become, like her true nature is hiding behind a facade of anger.
