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In-laws
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A WEEK after the wedding she shut me off!
13 Dec 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
“My son got married recently. It was a lovely wedding and all was well with my new daughter-in-law. One week after the wedding she shut me off. I have reared boys and have never had sulking people. I have never had to pamper a fragile little girl or an entitled person who has always had her own way. I do not want to do anything that I will have to do for the rest of my life to go out of my way to keep her happy or else she will sulk.” (Edited)
You are wonderfully equipped to handle this unfortunate event in your now-extended family.
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Should I speak up?
23 Oct 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
“My son and his wife visit us and eat meal after meal and leave us to do all the paying and the cleaning. Should I say something? I am beginning to dread their visits. It puts my husband in a bad mood and he goes on at me once they have gone. He’s my son’s stepfather.”
There’s a lot of speaking up necessary in this family.
Yes, speak up to your son and to his wife about contributing to the costs of meals and to the necessary cleanup after meals. Let them know, together, and in one conversation, that you’d enjoy having them over even more if they’d pick up their end of the deal.
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His mother gossips about me….
03 May 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
Gossips attempt to fill up empty lives by trying to destroy others.
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Do I speak up or suffer in silence?
22 Mar 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
Don’t determine his level of involvement with your family or allow him to determine yours.
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It’s all connected – even across the generations
24 Aug 2010 by Rod Smith / No Comments
When the adult takes the challenge of embracing the “impossible” father-in-law, or standing up to the “controlling” mother, the adult is taking personal responsibility for his or her pivotal relationships.
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Verbal log-jam
When I was a boy I’d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.
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Life in our beloved 122
If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it – which is something I once read somewhere – gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.
I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there’s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.
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Being a white South African can come with complications
Being a white South African reared under Apartheid is no simple matter. It permeated everything for me. While I do not pretend to have been a political activist, I was always cognizant that my privileges, simply a result of being born white, were unmerited, and most unfair especially when enjoyed at the expense of others who were not. I think this unsettling truth (for I took advantage of my station in life) was somewhat of a companion to me from the age of about six or seven.
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Location, location – remembering winter in August
We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.
Sometimes we walk to both and we don’t see the car for days.
I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.
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Ready to adopt?
If you wait until you are ready to adopt a child you never will because you will never be ready. The baby, and only the baby, will make you ready. Reading the right books will be helpful, but “ready” magically comes upon you when a real baby is sleeping in your arms or crying in the middle of the night. If you are not ready to change diapers – and I always am amused at the big deal about this non-issue – being unprepared will last only as long as a clean diaper.
Life inside the Smith household
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