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When confronted with over 40 pages of detail history and Lyn's offer to 'discuss any event' and to 'answer any question', Lyn's mom had only one point to dispute. "I had to work late at the bank on the night of your prom. I did not take the pictures. You obviously don't remember that the neighbor took them. Other daughters came to the bank in their prom dresses so their mothers got to see them, but you didn't." That was it, the only question, the only issue, the only point of discussion across the 47 topics spanning 25 years and covering 40 pages: "the neighbor took the prom pictures". So we made the following correction to the text:
Lyn followed up with a nice note to her mom, attempting to leverage this small offer of communication. She told her mom that she had no idea that she might have driven to the bank in her prom dress that long ago night and that she had never heard (in over 25 years) that such a thing might have even been desired. Then she asked her mom about the main point of that particular paragraph. Might a very private sixteen year old boy be embarrassed to have rather intimate pictures of himself paraded loudly to strangers? She did not even attempt to understand the question and would not discuss any other issue from the 40 plus pages. She simply waved her hand and reiterated her opinion that to bring up 'issues from the past' only 'causes hurt feelings' and 'resolves nothing'. When Lyn pointed out that she herself had been doing that very thing over the telephone for the previous two weeks (actually triggering the initial unveiling of the story), she responded that "that was different". |
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The response from Lyn's sister was more interesting. Lyn's mother has been regularly involving her older sister in both the Mother-Daughter and Mother-in-Law / Son-in-Law confrontations. Mother had been encouraging her to speak up and express her disagreement (by actually handing the telephone to her during Mother-Daughter phone calls and telling her 'you tell your sister what you think about this') and generally having her 'take sides' with her mom against her younger sister and brother-in-law. Lyn's older sister also was allowed to read the letter (again, allowing web publishing), and then wrote us to dispute two words in the entire 40 plus pages of memoirs. What was telling was how she phrased her dispute. In response, we made the following change:
She sent Lyn a brief E-Mail that said "If you remember, I PAID MY OWN WAY on the Disney World trip. I can even send you a copy of the cancelled check if you don't believe me." Ouch! Hit a raw nerve. No discussion of ruining a family Christmas, having a mother that encourages her children to take sides, having no family privacy or respect for the wishes of emancipated adult children. Not even phrasing the comment as a 'friendly reminder'. Oh well, Mother had finished seasoning the stew. As we told her, it was probably a bad strategy to encourage adult children to disagree where it was not necessary. "Live and let live" and "That's none of my business" are two phrases that are simply never used. |
Copyright, 2001, All rights reserved |
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First Upload: April 21, 2001 |