One of the benefits of moving out here is that we are close to family again.  Both sides.  Which, of course, makes it much easier to get together and visit and spend time together.

Being close to family is a good thing.

Unfortunately, family is why we left in the first place.  Specifically, my mother.  That’s a long story that doesn’t belong on this blog, but after 14 years away, things have changed and the biggest reason behind our leaving doesn’t exist anymore.  Still, when my mother asked us to move to the empty farm and take care of it for her, we did have to consider certain relationship issues along with everything else.  My mother is an amazing woman in many respects; intelligent, brave, strong, and a real survivor.  There are just… other issues.

Today, I ended up having an unplanned visit with my mother, so we could lend her our scale.  She is going for surgery in a couple of months (yay!  Finally – though not for her knee replacement, yet), and the surgeon wants her to lose some weight.  She remembered that there was a scale here, under a dresser that was in the hallway near the old kitchen.  I told her that yes, there was a scale here, but we packed all that up.  She was surprised that the stuff was not in that corner anymore and asked what was there now.  The cat litter box, I told her.  Oh, no! she lamented.  She doesn’t like that we have cats, because then we have a litter box, and then there’s the smell and…

I had to remind her what I’d already told her about before; that when we moved that dresser, we found old cat litter (and more).  Oh, but that wasn’t while she was at the farm…  *sigh*

Okay.  Moving on.

Once it was agreed that I would just lend her our scale, so she didn’t have to buy herself a new one, we worked out that I would come over today and finally get a visit in.

It was actually a good visit, overall, which is always appreciated.  Plus, it gave me the opportunity to show her pictures on my phone.  So she got to see the kittens, and some of her flowers.  I showed her the progress in the old kitchen and some of the things I found. I also showed her pictures of different areas in the yard that I’ve been cleaning up.

It was so strange.

I get some very mixed messages from my mother.

We are here to take care of the place for her.  Which we have been.  However, we have noticed things that are a priority that she had never had to concern herself over, because my dad or my brothers always took her of them.  In her mind, the priorities are the things she worked on.  Like the garden.  Which we’ve not touched this year and is overgrown.   At one point, she told me that I was lazy, and that I was unintelligent. But when I would tell her about the work I’ve been doing around the yard, she would start telling me that I shouldn’t be doing it, I should get my oldest brother to do it.  The one that lives 1 1/2 hours away.  Because I, being female, shouldn’t be doing this stuff.

Today, I started showing her pictures of different areas among the trees I’d cleared out.  Not even all of them; just the most recent.  This included before and after pictures, of course.  As I showed her a few… then a few more… then a bunch more… she suddenly sat back, looked at me and said; “you need a man around!”

*facepalm*

So, if I don’t do the work, I’m lazy, but if I DO do the work, I shouldn’t be doing it, because it’s men’s work (and let’s not even start on what she must think about my husband being disabled, in constant pain and unable to do this stuff).  I don’t think she even realized how insulting she was being, even when I told her flat out, that’s insulting.

There was no sense that she felt anything positive about what I’ve been doing.  I’d show her where I’d trimmed away from the storage house stairs and cleared her grapes a bit, and she demanded to know if I was watering them.  Was I doing this?  No, I’m focusing on that.  Well, what about this other thing?  No, I’m doing this, this and that, because they’re more of a priority.  What am I doing about those things over there?  Well, this is what I have planned.  Oh, she’d never do it that way, she did it this way and it was never a problem.  Gee, thanks, Mom.

It’s an odd position to be in.  I’m am glad that we moved out there, even with all the problems that came with the move.  I’m enjoying the work of getting things cleaned up, fixed up and cleared out, that hadn’t been done for so many years.  Every area we’ve worked on looks and feels so much better, even if there is still much work to do.  As I walk through different areas that I’ve cleared in the yard, it feels so much more open and airy and welcoming, and I can hardly wait to keep going.  Right now, I’m holding back until my birthday gift gets here.  Which was supposed to be delivered on Friday, but now when I check the tracking, there’s no date and it’s back to “in transit” at the city.  Turns out that we are “in a remote area where delivery does not happen every day”.  No kidding.  I should be receiving notifications now, though, if not a call, about delivery.  I might have to pick it up from a depot in the town my mother lives in, but we’ll see.  Until then, the clearing of the trees will wait.

The main thing is, while we are taking care of the place for my mom, it is becoming more and more our home.  My mother somehow thought that we could just leave everything behind and move into the house as it was, because everything was already perfect, and she’s still not understanding that no, it wasn’t perfect.  Not even close to perfect.  And we are finding things she knew nothing about that need to be dealt with.

I think, in a way, she never will.  And certainly I know that I will never be good enough, or do right, in her eyes.  But I do wish she would, if not appreciate the work that’s being done, stop telling me that I shouldn’t be doing it, because I’m female.

Ah, family.

The Re-Farmer