Amy joined us again last night for dinner. I fixed everyone’s favorite foods… dishes Amy doesn’t get to eat as often as she used to. Julie, our foreign exchange student, helped me prepare dinner while Beth kept the new pup busy. After dinner Beth was still on pup duty after helping clear the table. Julie was clearing the table and loading the dishwasher, her usual chore. Amy began helping her, but made the comment that she “knew what it was like doing all the work while everyone else disappeared.” This comment was not made in my earshot but was overheard by others.


I suppose I should let “hearsay” pass, but I have no interest in having this young lady come to my home and continue her 17 year pity party. I have choices now that I didn’t have all those years previous. I mentioned to Amy that I knew she had made that comment, and she was immediately defensive and said something about how it had happened that way… everyone else drove off in their cars and left her to do all the work. I said, “They gave back in different ways… You gave back by cleaning.” (Although a maid would have cost much less and smiled much more!) Furthermore, I calmly but clearly stated that I had spent plenty of time—too much time—living with her pity parties already and I was not going to voluntarily subject myself to any more. So if she wanted to complain or try to convince folks that she was poorly treated here, she might find she had fewer opportunities to be around us. She blew up and retreated to another room to cry, pout and lick her wounds.


She does not harbor any warm fuzzies for Beth, nor Beth for her, and Amy makes little attempt to hide or control her anger and jealousy. Sadly for Amy, Beth is very much a part of the package around here, and it behooves Amy to figure out how to get along with everyone in the family. I have given Amy more opportunities to embrace this family than there are grains of sand on the beach… and she was not interested. It grieves me that I am not motivated right now, but I’m not. I like my peace, I like my happy kids, I like not having to deal with her anger and her pouting and her attire and (lack of) hygiene and her poor academic performance and her unchanging immaturity. I know this is a bummer of a diatribe, but it is SO the way I feel. And I have talked to many, many parents who feel the same way. If I hadn’t worked SO incredibly hard to bring this kid into the fold, only to have her reject my efforts again, and again, and again, and again… maybe I’d feel differently. But just because she feels like linking arms (something she took for granted or often refused when living with us) doesn’t mean that I have to think everything is wonderful. Sorry for the rant… this is decades of frustration rearing its ugly head once again. I am at least as frustrated with my negativity or ambivalence as I am with her apparent lack of change.

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