"A Problem Page For All!"

I left abruptly because I'm using Steve's laptop and he needed to use it.

The fight. Well. The background is this: It was the beginning of April, which, as it turned out, was a pretty bad month for Cherie's health. We had set up this overnight visit with the grandparents so they could lecture in one of Steve's classes about their experience teaching in China. (Steve and Cherie thought of inviting them to do this in an effort to "bond." It backfired.) They arrived on March 31, Steve took them around the college and generally entertained them, then they lectured, then they came home and ate dinner that the four of us at home had prepared (I think they were mad that we didn't pray before eating and ate in the living room instead of at the dining room table, which was and still is covered in papers), then Steve took them to a lecture going on at the college and to the faculty-only at-the-college-president's-house reception going on afterwards. He'd got permission to bring them to the reception, which made them feel all official. We thought it would be nice for them. I think it just made them feel puffed-up but also made Grandpa feel jealous of his son. (Grandpa spent 20 years writing his dissertation, finally got his doctorate degree from Harvard, and spent like 10 years being a decidently second-rate professor at Calvin College, the Dutch-Christian Reformed college and a well-respected institution in the field. Cherie and Steve both got their bachelor degrees there, and met there; Cherie had amazing test scores in high school and could've gone to an Ivy League, but everybody assumed she'd go to Calvin, so she...went. Anyway, the thing is that Steve is now a dean at Huntington College, and Grandpa never, never was in such a high position when he worked at Calvin, so I think he's got some jealousy going on.) Anyway, they came back to the house and made stitlted conversation about the lecture and reception. Cherie hadn't felt well so hadn't gone to the evening events, even though she usually goes to receptions like that, since faculty spoouses are invited. We four had spent the day watching movies (having moved the TV and VCR upstairs so Cherie could have a retreat from the public, relative-inhabited space if she wasn't feeling good) and worrying about how the visit was going with Steve and his parents over at the college.

So, they came home and Grandma gave Cherie a blue satin Chinese Kleenex box cover -- one in a set of four that one of her Chinese students had given to her. She laughed nervously and said, "There were four, which was perfect. One for each daughter-in-law!" That would be Cherie, Steve's wife; Sandy, Phil's wife; and Julie, Dan's wife. But the last of their children, Pete, isn't married. So the fourth daughter-in-law she was talking about is Rose, married to Fan, who's this Chinese protegee they took on about 10 years ago during one of their first sessions teaching in China. They now refer to him as a fifth son, treat him to the same Christmas gifts, etc., and visit him lots more than they visit us. (He lives in Chicago, so when the grandparents claim that they're far too busy to travel down here to Indiana to visit us, it's more than a bit hypocritical when they drive through Indiana to visit Rose and Fan in Illinois.) Anyway. The reference to Rose made us all uncomfortable, since jealousy runs a leetle high regarding the "adopted" fifth "son." Plus, Cherie resented the idea that she, as a woman and the supposed resident housewife of our house, would have any more use for a Kleenex box cover than any of the rest of us. That is to say, it's a really dumb product made in a sweatshop in China and Grandma's been passing off her Chinese gifts to us for years with the stipulation that we've got to act like they're God's gift to our home decor, and we're sick and tired of keeping up the facade. (We have a mangled Chinese charm thing hanging on our back door knob. I don't know how it got there, but it's faded red plastic with red ribbons wrapped around it, fraying a bit, and we make jokes about it being an explicit fertility charm. Eh, maybe you gotta be there. It's a way to lose the stress. But I do wonder if Grandma happened to see it there.... One of the Chinese gifts she gave me, a purse I think, or else a set of opera figurines, I sent to Chloe because I'd heard that she collects Chinese stuff. I told Grandma about it, thinking that if she was so eager to pawn off her unwanted gifts, she'd be thrilled to hear that I pawned off mine onto someone who really actually wanted it! But Grandma got all still and silent and radiated haughty offendedness, so I shut my mouth after that. I give the stuff to Goodwill and make no comment beyond the syrupy thank-yous, which I'm mad at myself about making. Does this sentence make sense? Time to close the parentheses, I think!!)

So. The evening was strained. By the time they left for their motel, we had a lot of debriefing to do. We'd planned to make them lunch and send them home the next day, but we were so stressed that we decided to go over to the college and eat at the dining commons instead of exerting ourselves cooking for the jerks. ("Jargs," as we say -- derived from when Rachel was eight years old and couldn't spell but felt the need to communicate in writing regarding what a jerk I, the younger sister, was being. She spelled "jerk" "jarg," and it's stuck. Anyway. Not that that's related to the grandparents, just thought I'd throw it in.)

So. The next day comes. Steve gets up early to greet them. He's supposed to entertain them until the rest of us get up (he earnestly asked us not to rise early on his account, or his parents' account, which I thought was sweet of him) and we could go over to the dining commons as soon as they started serving lunch.

Apparantly while the four of us were snoozing off the stress of the previous night, Steve got up and, in an effort to entertain his parents, agreed to see their photo album of their most recent China stint. Well. We've been arguing over photos and slides with these errant relatives for age on end. When they get their precious images on display and start lecturing, there is absolutely no freaking stopping them. Grandpa leers and puffs himself up and says about all the Chinese women, "She's such a pretty lady. Chinese ladies are all so pretty." And Grandma peers at them and insists on listing off everybody's names, when we don't give a damn who's who after the twenty-seven-thousandth photo.

But poor long-suffering Steve offered to look at just a couple pages. So they trapped him on the couch, one on each side and the heavy-as-hell album in his lap, and kept him there for something like an hour. By that time he was nearing a panic attack and it was a good thing a few of us came downstairs.

That's where the trouble really began. Feeling obliged to get my ass out there and help with the social situation, I dressed quickly, unbraided my hair, then grabbed my brush and went out into the living room to stand in a corner and brush my hair. I mean, brushing more than a yard of hair isn't exactly unobtrusive, but I thought Steve needed some moral support out there.

Grandpa, who's got some strange sexual repressions and flips for "pretty ladies" (he's probably gay, because he seems to flip for pretty men, too), went haywire when he saw my hair unbound. He went and got his camera and said, "I just have a to have a picture of this!"

Back up twelve years. Photos are an ISSUE between us and them, ever since Grandma wanted a studio photo of the whole family for Christmas one year and I, rebellious soul that I am, had a fit, had to be bribed with candy, and posed in the photo perched on Cherie's hip with my doll hugged in one arm and my thumb in my mouth. I don't see what's so very wrong with that, but I found out later that one of the relatives furiously accused me of "ruining" that portrait. Well, gee, I'll remember you when I'm famous and you're a nobody and you want a favor from me! (Sorry, just a bitter fantasy of mine.)

So, then we had the Easter photo in the grandparents' living room, for which I swear I smiled, but just looking at it you can feel the tension crackling in the air. And the posed photo a year or so ago where I SMILED SO BIG MY JAW HURT FOR THE NEXT FOUR DAYS and still they weren't happy. And they're always asking for pictures of us grandchildren because they have school photos of all their other grandchildren (including, of course, Rose and Fan's two unwitting children) and the Chinese want to see photos of their eldest son's children, and blah, blah, blah...

So, cameras have become an issue. And Grandpa pointed his at me. Now, I'm vain as a peacock about my hair and my first reaction was to be flattered. I mean, he said he loved my hair. Who could resist that? But when he took my arm to move me to a blank spot on the wall, told me to smile big (startled, I complied), and pointed the lens at my head -- not bothering to even try to get a photo of my hair, which was falling in pretty waves down to my knees -- I knew I had been had. But what could I do? I excused myself with a muttered comment and stomped into the office, where I dumped the whole story onto Jimmy and Cherie. Cherie made a bunch of mm-hmming noises and I gathered that she didn't want to hear about it, so I went to find Rachel and heard a similar story from her (in which Grandpa tried to take off her stocking cap, which was like her one fashion item the entire winter and spring -- she never took it off -- and it really offended her to have it plucked off her head, not to mention that her hair was greasy; and she didn't smile for the lens).

So I go to the kitchen to find some breakfast and I come out to see if Cherie's feeling okay and I run into some heat in the living room. Because Grandpa has pointed his camera at Cherie.

Cherie, using her barely-polite, I'm-really-pissed-off voice, enunciating every sylabol; the voice she uses for the Right to Life people who call asking for donations: "Oh, no, please. Do not take my photo, Phil."

[Note: Grandpa and Grandma both object violently to being called by their first names by their daughters-in-law. Cherie is supposed to be proper and call them "Pop" and "Mom."]

Grandpa: "Well, Cherie-berry, why not?"

[Note: Nana, Cherie's mom, calls her Cherie-berry as an endearment, Steve picked it up when he went to visit the family before their engagement, and Grandpa picked it up. It's never been a welcome nickname coming from his lips, because he can and does invest condescention into any nickname, especially for a woman.]

Cherie: "No. Absolutely not."

Grandpa: "Are you feeling so bad today?"

Cherie: "This has nothing to do with my health! It's a personal space issue! Do NOT take my picture!"

Caitsy, sweetness, it went from there. Soon Grandpa was telling Cherie that he could sense she had "a lot of anger" and she had chosen to direct it at him "for some reason," and Cherie was saying, yeah, she had a lot of anger, about the way he had treated Steve and her over the years, and Grandpa was saying that Cherie going to grad school had done bad things to the family, and I jumped in at that point and wished I hadn't so I left to find Steve. I was really worried that he'd be angry at Cherie for "causing a scene," so I thought I could try to mollify him before he stomped in and told them all to go to hell or something, or, worse, took his parents' side and lit into Cherie. But he was on the back porch, shaking, but totally on Cherie's side (thank the good angels!). I got all guilty at that point and said it was probably my fault for dumping my photo-stress on Cherie earlier and for getting stressed about the photo in the first place, and he said, "The photo was NOT your fault! In photography class, they call that photo rape, to take a picture of an unwilling subject. You've been photo-raped. Rape is never your fault!" And I laughed and said, "I never thought I'd hear my dad telling me that!" But he didn't laugh back and he looked all white around the mouth, so I tried to think of anything I could do to help. But I've always believed that a health dose of honesty would do his family a world of good, so I didn't think I should give pithy advice if some good could come out of it. Of course, the conflict-avoider in me was hoping that the grandparents would stand up and walk out and go home so we could forget the whole ordeal, but that dind't happen.

Soon Cherie came to the back porch, which I thought was bizarre, because it meant that the grandparents were just sitting there in the living room. So then they came out to the back porch, and Grandpa sat on the steps while Steve and Cherie and Grandma and I stood around awkwardly, and Steve started talking about stuff he'd been hurt by dating back to his teenagehood (he didn't even touch his childhood...oof), and Grandma made tsk noises and tried to defend herself and Grandpa while also trying to be fair and saying that she loved Steve and whatnot. To give her some credit, she does want the relationship to work. I honestly think Grandpa doesn't want it to work. I mean, some part of him must want, but he could be making a helluva bettet effort if the wanting-it-to-work part wasn't buried quite so deep under his own hurt and pride.

So. That's about it. After a while they took some bananas and cheese and went home. And like a week or so later Grandpa sent a six-page, single-spaced letter to Steve at his office. The gist of it was...well, there wasn't a gist, except that he said he loved him, but then went off into ramblings basically exonerating himself from any blame in the whole freaking relationship. He said lots about how he "worried" that Cherie had "anger" and said he wouldn't see Cherie again until she explicitly requested to do so. Which is...well, you draw your own conclusion from THAT!

My hands are getting tired and it's four a.m. and I should go to bed. It's a weird story, isn't it? There's so much dysfunction there, it's just pitiful. I want to gather them all into my arms and just weep. I can't stand it. So much hurt, so much pointless hurt and anger and misunderstanding and stubborness and pride! Ick. I want to wash my hands of it, but I'm one-quarter Philip Holtrop, and I can't wash my hands of him!

I really need to go. Did that answer your question?! Wow, this is a long post. Good night, sweetie! Oh, I want to call you sometime soon. You going to be at home in the next couple of days, if I can get some free time and commandeer the phone?!

Visit my web site at http://elizabeth.bouma-holtrop.com!{/center}