My mom called this afternoon to tell me that I needed to be careful with the nanny that we selected. Apparently, my dad has been fueling her fear of a non-family member taking care of our baby during the day by sharing stupid and ridiculous YouTube videos of babies getting kidnapped. The one that my dad showed her was of a mom who was unloading her car of groceries. She was running in between the car and the house and left her front door open. At some point, a stranger snuck into her house and grabbed her baby and left. Of course, this completely freaked out my mother and made her even more paranoid. My dad has an amazing talent of further instilling paranoia into my mother when she is already naturally paranoid and untrusting. It’s almost like he gets some sick thrill of scaring my mother even more than she already is. And when I have previously pointed this out to him, he pulls out his bullshit “what aboutisms,” which futilely attempts to divert the attention from him and immaturely tries to imply that whatever I do is worse. What-about-isms are one of the most immature responses because it refuses to accept the possibility of wrongdoing on one’s part. My dad has been doing this pretty much since I was a young child, so it’s nothing new to me.

Then, she suggests that my aunt had a suggestion. What she really means to say is, she has a suggestion but she wants to say that my aunt or my dad or my uncle or someone else she has spoken with suggested it so that it would come off as lighter to me. She says that my aunt suggested that Chris’s mother fly over and live with us until the baby was at least one so that a family member who actually genuinely cares could take care of the baby. Family is best, my mom said. “You can trust family to take care of your child. You cannot trust outside people to take care of your child.” She said that she would do it, but her arms and back are not strong enough; she could drop the baby, and that’s it!! So, she concluded, Chris’s mother would be good for this because she is able bodied.

While in some families, this would be normal, this is not going to happen here. Chris’s mother has never offered to do anything like that. They live all the way in Australia; that’s a 21-hour flight away!!! Does my mother ever use any real logic ever?? They are coming to visit in the summer, but it is exactly what it sounds like: it is a visit. They are not coming for the purpose of child rearing. I don’t even think that something that she is interested in. She is probably more interested in using our baby as a trophy to be able to tell everyone that she finally has a grandchild! She’s never given any indication of wanting to help with rearing her grandchildren, and that’s completely fine. Plus, she works. Not everyone has the luxurious life my mother does where she has all of these paychecks coming in and she doesn’t have to work. And my mother also ignores the fact that people from other countries cannot just fly over and stay here for unlimited amounts of time legally. She does not understand anything about this. 

I tried to explain this to her, and of course, she just gets really defensive and angry and says that I am causing conflict. She says I am overreacting and raising my voice when she didn’t mean any harm. And her favorite thing to say of all time is: “you may have more education than me, but I have more wisdom.” Because that is so relevant in a stupid conversation like this. 

If she really had more wisdom, she would not be getting paranoid and frantic over stupid ass YouTube videos that my dad shows her to freak her out and hate the world more.