I was really sad and upset last night.
Even though I have been better about not caring, even though I happily took a nap yesterday afternoon instead of cooking vegetables, it really hurt when MIL invited everyone but me to help, and then FIL thanked everyone but me. It hurt that i didn’t deserve thanks, because I didn’t help or contribute. Because I wasn’t allowed to.
And MIL knows this. She has known for years. She has never invited me to help set up, and now more than ever she knows she could extend that olive branch, but won’t. My husband wanted to talk to her or his father about it, but I said absolutely not. At this point, all I have in this family is my dignity, and I’d rather keep it than beg to be included.
I think my SIL could have advocated for me a little bit though. When FIL was thanking everyone but me, I leaned to the teenage boy next to me, family friends of SIL’s from Connecticut, and said, “I wasn’t allowed to help.” And SIL totally heard me. She knows it’s important to me. I get that she doesn’t want to cross MIL. No one does, but still it would have been nice, when they were setting up, if she had said, “Let’s invite Twinkle.” Or when MIL was assigning menu items, if she had said, “That’s the dish that Twinkle always brings; let her bring that and I’ll bring something else.”
Speaking of the food, the kale pesto dish was inedible. The key to that dish is that you have to roast all the vegetables at different times, so that everything is the right texture. So, you have to roast the potatoes for an hour, but the Brussels sprouts for 30 minutes, so that the potatoes are soft but the Brussels sprouts are crisp, etc. You sauté the mushrooms and diced cauliflower in an iron skillet. Then you toss it all in the kale pesto and keep it warm. SIL must have cooked everything altogether, and omitted the potatoes (because God forbid anyone has access to a startch in this family). I took one bite of a mushy Brussels sprout that had been cooked almost beyond recognition. It was horrible.
To add insult to injury, there was another item that had never been on the Passover menu before: the sweet potatoes that I bring to Thanksgiving. Scott’s grandmother had a friend, Miss Thelma, who died a couple of years ago, and she always brought her famous sweet potatoes to Thanksgiving. (Thanksgiving is the one holiday in this family that is halfway normal, that everyone is allowed to contribute to, because it’s hosted by Scott’s very Southern and kind Aunt Amanda.) When Miss Thelma died, I asked Amanda if I could take over the sweet potatoes, because I thought they were an important family tradition. I have taken them over, and perfected them maybe even beyond Miss Thelma’s original recipe. I triple the streusel on top, and you do NOT want to know how much butter is in them.
Well, last night, there were Miss Thelma’s sweet potatoes, right there on the Passover buffet. They were horrible, too. There was barely any streusel on top, and either my MIL or SIL cut out a lot of the butter and sugar in the potato part, too. It is so typical. They take over every recipe I ever bring to anything, and ruin it.
Also, last night MIL was in rare form, making mean faces, eye rolling, and killing everyone’s joy. At dinner, all the teenagers got a glass of super sweet bubbly wine instead of grape juice. The wine barely had any alcohol content and they each sipped their one tiny glass over the course of two and a half hours. Three sets of teen parents were fine with it, but MIL was not fine with it, and she let everyone know with her eye rolls and judgment. She went over to A and cousin S and tried to lecture them. But guess what: I was fine with it. SIL was fine with it. And there was nothing Grams could do to change that.
She also couldn’t stand it during one of the songs when E and cousin S were getting a little silly and joking around. They weren’t bothering anyone but were just having fun—it was what family memories were made of, but she just could not stand it. She cannot stand when anyone has fun or joy. She has to crush it. She actually yelled at cousin E, a precocious 10-year-old boy. No one in my family crushes joy or yells at kids at family parties. If kids get a little rambunctious, their parents might pull them aside for a talking-to, but no grandmother, great aunt, or cousin would ever dream of such a thing. (But remember, I’m the one with the dysfunctional family.)
It will all be over after tonight. I mean they have another six days of all their Passover rules, but at least I won’t have to see her and endure her eye rolls, and feel excluded. And someday, as Daddy said, she’ll be too old to do it all, and it will fall to me, and she’ll have to watch as it becomes beautiful and fun and joyful, and she won’t be able to stop it. Also, her son loves me. And my girls love me, and cousins S and E love me. I need to remember that I don’t care, and be sweet, and not complain about these raw wounds, and just play the long game.
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