Given the recent spurt of genealogy information I gathered, I decided to email my mother and let her know some of the information I found, in hopes it would show her in good faith that I’m willing to share this information with her. In return, I hoped she would finally let go of some of the information she gathered and share it with me like she promised. I’ve always been under the impression she’s hoarding this information and holding it over my head like a weapon.

These are the replies I get:

Who is this person? I need to contact them. Give me their contact information so I can compare notes, but can’t do it for another week or so.

I do have the names of XXX parents. I just have to look it up. Right now I can’t because I’m in the middle of mid-term exams at college and don’t have time to look for it.

She was originally Cherokee Indian, so her parents would have Cherokee names, not American names. I will have to look at what my cousin sent me. Don’t have time right now.

I dunno, seemed more like a demand to me. And I’m certainly not going to just give away contact information of someone. That’s private. Regardless, I’ve warned my cousin about it, and apologized that I may not have information to share with her because of my greedy mother. My cousin and I both agree that sharing genealogy information is a -good- thing, and don’t understand why people hold onto it like buried treasure.

Whatever. I found information without you mother. If I have to live with just the information that was provided to me from other sources, so be it. You will not use this silly bullcrap against me.

[Edit]: I wrote a reply:

This person gave me all the information I needed, nevermind.

They are checking on the tribe again to be sure.

Good luck with your exams.

To which she replied fast with:

You didn’t tell me who this person is. What information did they give you? I need it for my research.

Yeah. Right.

When I didn’t reply fast enough, I received another:

Hey, are you going to give me the information or not?

To which I finally decided to reply:

Mom,

I have been trying to get some information on my family from not only you but other people in the family and NO ONE seems to want to give it up. Do you know how disheartening this is for my generation? That our ancestors make it so hard for us to find out where we came from?

This relative that I found went through the same thing. People hoarding information and not wanting to share it, they don’t understand it and neither do I. As you and I spoke of before, I will be creating a website with this information to share with all of the people in my bloodline. I will probably be setting up the foundation of the website before the end of the month even.

I’m not giving you their contact information. If they want to contact you, I will let them know. In the mean time you can relay messages through me, or you can stop being so opaque about the whole thing and making demands like you just did.

I just want to know about my family. It is information I want for my kids if I have them, and part of the learning process of figuring out who I am. I understand you are busy, everyone is. I also understand you have mid-terms. But I have been patiently waiting for this information for about a year, and you wouldn’t even give me your grandparents names. I had to find that out elsewhere. I highly doubt this was information you had to look up.

I’m not trying to shake the boat. You and I both know very well that we lead very different lives and that this will most likely never change. Don’t try and make this out to be an attack on you, because it isn’t. See it for what it is.

Her only reply to that was:

Good luck in your research.

Which, knowing my mother, means she’s not sharing squat. And probably never intended to.

Thanks mom.

I spent a good chunk of yesterday morning at the Grove working on the library and moving filing cabinets and tv’s on my own. It was surprisingly quiet (everyone was at free spirit or gay pride day), I was alone until about 11 when one guy showed up, and at 12 when another guy showed up with a pizza. But I felt good about all the work I got done, and that I was able to be there for the two visitors to spend time in the spiritual sanctuary.

My uncle decided to get two dozen guinea hen eggs to hatch. He doesn’t plan to keep him, he just wants to see if he can hatch them, and give them to us once he does. We’ll be keeping a dozen and giving another dozen to Highland Farms (assuming they hatch) as a donation to help with their tick problem.

My father found a 7 foot blacksnake in our rabbit cook this morning, and it had apparently eaten our pigeon eggs and peacock egg. We have a few around our property as I’ve mentioned before, but they usually keep the mice and rats down by the animal pens at bay. My dad caught it and took it down the road a ways to let it go in a field. Hopefully we won’t have any others making a meal out of our eggs anytime soon.

I found out my mother somehow got her job back at Northrup Grumman. I don’t know if this means that she is no longer going to school to get her law degree, or perhaps she gave up on it now that she has joint custody of my sister? Or perhaps she’s doing it to make herself look good again because she knew she would never get full custody working part time for $8/hour while living with her father for free?

Whatever the case, I have no doubt she has a ridiculous motive behind it.

I just got back from dinner, and there’s a lot going through my head.

It wasn’t a -bad- dinner, I guess. She offered to pay, which was fine with me. She didn’t ask any demeaning questions about my religion or anything like that, probably because my sister was there.

I don’t know, I thought I went to the dinner to try and figure out what she was up to, but I couldn’t sense anything. There were no hints or ulterior motives. It was just….dinner.

Obviously I won’t ignore the fact that this is the same woman who only 6 months ago was threatening to sue me and calling me a devil-worshipper. Or that this woman is capable of relentless lying and scheming. Or that I haven’t even been around her for more than 10 minutes in probably 8 years.

But in a way it was still very sad. She has aged a lot in the last 8 years, moreso than she probably would if she wasn’t under all the stress of this custody battle. She could barely walk, mostly just hobbling side to side, using my sister for support when stepping down from a curb. She had a hard time reading small print, and I could notice all of the new wrinkles and aging in her complexion than I remember from highschool. It was hard to make eye contact, and I didn’t do it as much as possible. It made me uncomfortable.

It gave me a lot of conflicting thoughts. Here is a woman who was a vile human being to her first born, had a great job which she threw away, had several marriages, gave herself up, and now she’s all alone. Living rent-free with her 70 year old father, working part-time for $8/hour, knowing every single day that her first child despises her.

It’s almost like watching a rabid dog sitting in a cage. You know it’s evil and you want nothing to do with it, but at the same time you sympathize with the poor suffering beast. It’s confusing. And I don’t know if I should feel guilty or just sad. I won’t allow myself to feel guilty because I did nothing wrong, but I don’t know if I can be forgiving, and I know I can’t forget.

When we left, my mother asked for a hug. I leaned down and gave her a small one, and glanced over at my sister, who was smiling. Smiling because no doubt she was happy that she thinks things will begin to repair themselves between my mother and I.

That left me even more confused. I just don’t think they will.