alanmt

S_____ is generous of her time and what little she material goods she has. She does nice things for people. She cooks and bakes and takes the food to her children. She buys lots of little gifts for her grandchildren. She is always willing to babysit her grandchildren so her children and their spouses can have a date night or get together with friends. She is a very hard worker; after her divorce she worked long hours in low paying jobs to provide for five children. She sacrificed having things for herself so she could buy her youngest a horse and later pay for him ot learn and compete in figure skating. She is mostly retired now, as she is 71, but she still provides daycare for her youngest granddaughter. They go for walks and stop to talk to all the neighbors, who like her very much.

S____ is no stranger to tragedy. She had six kids; but one little girl died when she was a few weeks old. She lost a son on the cusp of adulthood in a car accident. She was raised by a loving but disabled father and a bitter and cruel mother. Her first husband was very handsome, but proved to be mean and ignorant. She never married the father of her sixth child; he was twenty years her junior, ambitious and driven, and eventually he left her behind, breaking promises that she probably should not have relied on anyway.

S____ is stupid. Dumb. Those words are insulting. There isn't a nice way to say "of low intelligence". But her IQ is in the bottom few points of the normal range. She has poor judgment. She has difficulty understanding complex arguments, and sometimes even simple ones. She learns devices by repetition, without understanding, and anything out of the ordinary is difficult for her to grasp. She just assumes it is broken. She can drive, but keeps the radio to one station for the sake of simplicity. She has trouble with cell phones, computers, televisions, DVD players, remotes, ovens, microwaves. Her two year old granddaughter can work an ipad better than she can. She is embarrassingly bad at games, and her children have to restrict themselves to the simplest of card games or word games when they get together, or pick team games where she can be a part of a group without looking too bad. She left the one good job she had in life to follow her favorite daughter to another city, and couldn't get it back when they moved back six months later. She is very bad with money. She was always running out of money in her first marriage when her husband, a military man, was on remote assignment and she had to take care of the household. She spent all her money buying worthless, gimmicky crap from Fingerhut and never had enough left for food and gas. Her yougnest son learned to count money early because he had to help her count pennies to buy groceries. She didn't realize how sick her baby daughter was and didn't have money for gas and the little girl died because she waited to take her to the doctor. When she went to the bar with her favorite, oldest daughter and her boyfriend, they would bring the boyfriend's motorhome and park it in parking lot of the bar, and leave her youngest two kids and her daughter's two kids in the motorhome, where they would watch the parking lot fights and drunken blowjobs.

S____ is poison. She is a seething mass of bitterness and resentment who views all of life through the most negative lens one could apply. She never has one nice thing to say about anyone. All she does is criticize, and she often criticizes the ones she loves the most. She is mean. She is paranoid. The slightest of flaws or the mildest of transgressions give rise to a depth of dislike and complaint and gossipy public denunciation befitting the deeds of a child rapist and murderer. Other poor people are deadbeats. Anyone who makes more money is stuck up and arrogant. Anyone who disagrees with her is bossy. She has infected her four living children with this poison, and it makes them unhappy and less successful in life. She creates stress on their families. She interferes in her chidlren's raising of their own kids, because anything they do that is different from how she would do it is wrong and stupid in her eyes. She has a special dislike for her sons- and daughters-in-law. They can do nothing right. Her children could do much better. Any normal marital dispute is entirely the fault of the in-law, not her child, and reinforces her own negative opinions, which she then vents with full force on all of her children. And she interferes in her children's marriages, constantly degrading her children's spouses, and creating discord. She is a bit racist, and she mocks the physical flaws of others. She is not fun. The only jokes she makes are at someone else's expense.

S____ is my daughter's grandmother. I try to love her for her generosity. I try to pity her for her tough life and her difficulties understanding things and do what I can to make her life easier. I try not to despise her for her negativity and bile, for the ways that she has hurt my husband and tainted him. Today, I am failing at all three.