The Other Woman

She’s done it again, The Other Woman…

Last night when my son and I arrived home, I was getting things out of the car and he was already on the front porch before I had the chance to notice it: A package, addressed to him.

“Hey, Mom, look! It’s for me! Can I open it?”
I saw the return address and cringed.
“Sure, Baby.”

What I really wanted to do was hunk it into the garbage can, but only after I’d backed over it with my SUV and maybe stomped on it a little with my heels.The sender of the package was my son’s other grandmother. I call her that because she is a stranger to him, a person who last saw him when he was two years old, on the day after his father’s death. I’ve talked about this here before, about my bewilderment with the people who have abandoned us. (See October 5th, 2002) Rather, I should say, abandoned him…

Not long after the October 5th post, my son received another piece of mail from his other grandmother, this time in the form of a letter, or so I thought. I was more suspicious of it than hopeful that it was some attempt to reach out to him, so I opened it. What I found inside infuriated me: It was a copy of a court document regarding the heirs of the estate of his other grandfather. THIS was her way of telling me that my husband’s father had died?!!! I thought how cruel it was to have addressed to my son. I thought how cold it was that someone, anyone could not have even clipped out an obituary to enclose, so I did the search myself and found out that he had passed some three weeks earlier. Surely, then, this communication would be our last from her… Never assume, right?

In the kitchen my son opened the plain brown box, inside was a wrapped Christmas present for him, from “Gramma.”

“Mom, who’s Gramma?”
“Your other grandmother.”
“I have another grandmother?”
“Yes, your dad’s mother.”
“Oh.”
He shook the box a little.
“I wonder what it is? Can I put this under the tree?”
“Sure.”

I left it at that. What else could I do?