It's strange how deathly quiet it is here without the three boys. When Big Jim picked them up after work on Monday and just Georgia and Mama and I were eating supper, I couldn't get over the conspicuous silence. I hadn't thought I would feel the their absense so soon ... they're gone two nights a week at swim practice, but Georgia usually goes for swimming lessons, too, so it's just Mama and me and we don't fix supper for just ourselves.
I'm glad to say I've resigned myself to the boys ultimately not being here anymore, though. Clay is 16, Josiah 14, and Sam 11, so even though they don't know the details of their father's involvement with their sister and are probably too immature to actually grasp the situation, still the fact remains that he had an incestual relationship with Melody - they know this and yet they are stupid enough to want to live their father because it's "fun" - impeccable reasoning, no? Fine...they have chosen.
I think I would feel worse about it if they weren't such a trio of bratty boys. They've gotten zero direction or discipline from either their father or their mother for quite some time. If Sam was still his sweet self and Clay the sensitive responsible guy he once was only a year or two ago, I would be afraid what would happen to them. But all three of them are so self-absorbed now!
I feel a naughty sense of glee thinking about them being condemned to a whole semester at least of school with Mama Jean - AND they have to live with her. I could let it rest with just that statement, as I lived with her, if you remember correctly, for six awful years. She's CRAZY. Like her son. Like Jewell. They might not have Huntington's on that side of the family but something is definately loose in the Copland brain. I don't think there's one of Mama Jean's siblings who isn't a bit odd. Lots of crazy. And then one of Aunt Betty's granddaughters left her husband and two sons to shack up with her first cousin ... yeah, talk about cliches. But Big Jim, of course, has left them all behind in the dust.
I also wonder who on earth cleans that house in which they live. What are the state of their bathrooms? Mama Jean is messy, so she won't be any help. The boys are so lazy that someone's going to have to lay down the law ... at least as far as school goes. They take long breaks whenever they feel like it, and Mama didn't do anything about it. Josiah and Sam would have the freakin' radio on back in their room - "it helps us concentrate!" but then they go tell Mama that my music on my computer in the living room is bothering them. The few times Mama Jean has substituted teaching for us when we lived with her, she got really stressed out. Hey, if the boys want her as their teacher, they're welcome to her!
I think I've already started the detachment process with those boys, the way I have with Melody and Jewell. It's really easier not to care too much and to keep myself at an emotional distance - they are all old enough to be accountable for the decisions they've made. I can't imagine respecting Melody again or wanting to be close to her after the way she took her crucial testimony from the trial; it's not even that I'm angry, in Melody's case, I'm just neatral. She has a boyfriend of her own now who's very serious about her and going to see her counselor with her, and I'm glad for her - I want her to be happy. I just have the lost the desire I've had all the years to get back to being besties with her.
As for Jewell, yeah, I have plenty of anger there. How can I not? How can she think it's okay for her to support someone she knows is so perverted? Where is the reasoning behind it?
Oh, Jewell is supposed to come over this morning for a visit. Yay. I haven't seen her since the trial and would be perfectly fine with not seeing her now.
And Melody just wrote on my Facebook wall that she wanted to call me - yay. I don't even remember when the last time is we talked on the phone - Memphis, probably. I know she's going to ask, well, how am I doing, and expect me to share all my problems and struggles with her so she can sympathize. That is the last thing I want to do. I've done it countless times over the past few years, but I am so over it. I usually end up regretting it.
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