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[quote=Anonymous][quote]Anyway, I was talking to my mom on the phone the other day - planning the yearly trip out to visit them (at great expense to me but I do it.) When my mom starts talking about how amazing it is to be a grandparent and what special relationships she has with her grandchildren. She has not seen or spoken to my kids in two years. Could it be that my mom actually thinks she is an involved grandparent?[/quote]

It's hard for me not to think that your mother doesn't remember you have kids - because I'm projecting.  My father died when I was 20 and my mother remarried when I was 26 to a man she'd known for 20 years.  He was divorced with 6 kids and his youngest was about my age (I'm the youngest of 4).  I'd met a couple of his kids prior to the wedding and the rest at the wedding.  I don't think I ever saw them again.  My mother made it a point not to have us at any events with them.  As with my father, the man in her life because the center of her universe.  Rather, the man in her life and his kids became the center of her world.  I could regale you with tales of our second class status.  I think one of the most striking is that when her DH died, my mother not only didn't tell us when his celebration of life service was (our maternal grandmother told us) but she told 2 of my siblings and I not to come (the fourth had made it known years before he was done trying to have a relationship with her).

Another one, she had asked us to come visit for a week one summer.  We settled on the week months in advance.  Two weeks before we were supposed to drive out (it's a 12 hour drive), she causally mentions that she's not going to be there when we come to visit.  She'd be 2 hours away babysitting for one of her dead husband's sons.  The son and his DW wanted to take a little getaway and asked if she could babysit.  She told me we were still welcome to come.  I told her there was no point.  It's not like there's much to do in my hometown and the point of the trip was to visit with her.   I cancelled the trip.  We went to Williamsburg instead.

What really gets me is that everyone thinks she's amazing.  So kind, so giving, a real do-gooder.  They can't believe her own kids have so little to do with her.  Why, they didn't even come to support her when her husband died! Whatever.

Sorry to go off.  Your post struck a nerve, obviously.[/quote]

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