On the paternal side...

I watched Encanto relatively late, so I saw a lot of comments without context. Regardless, I remember a lot of people tweeting about the relationships, especially with the grandmother.

They hated her.

One of the most interesting things (and this came up somewhat with Turning Red and Everything Everywhere All At Once too) was this understanding that we have moved from stories where there are dead parents not getting in your way to living parents that you have to deal with, trauma included.

Without really getting into the history of animated storytelling and fairy tale traditions, the other thing I remember pretty clearly was a divide, with Latinx people being more willing to retain a relationship with Grandma, understanding why she was the way she was, and recognizing the behavior patterns of other family members as well.

It seemed white people were more likely to cast off hurtful relatives forever. That was not an official study, just what seemed to be observable. Perhaps a certain amount of privilege makes people a little more callous, or maybe we focus more on boundaries now.

Personally, I can relate to being unable to deal with any imperfections backed by a fear so terrible that it can't even be openly acknowledged openly that any crack of imperfection will result in the collapse of everything else, and that gives me some sympathy for Abuela..

But I also don't talk to my father. For what it's worth, we're white.

I have written about that relationship a lot, and I don't intend to rehash everything here. The key points are that there was a lot of damage, I have been healing, and I am going over these things now as part of this last round of healing.

The last breakthrough was associating my feelings of inferiority with my father's unhappiness and with my need to overcompensate and fix everything for everyone. It is possible that came through because of something that happened in February.

Of my father's five children, he has one that is in contact with him, so we sometimes hear things. It had become clear that we could start talking to him again like nothing ever happened. We weren't interested, but without us being forgiven, we could have our deficiencies ignored.

Then, when he was digitizing old slides, he sent all of us e-mail with the slides attached. Through the grapevine we knew he asked if we had said anything.

I felt I needed to respond. I wrote a long message pouring everything out, and deleted it.

Then I wrote a shorter message:

Hello,

I know it's been a while since you sent these. I was worried that it was rude not to respond, but what I could say seemed like it would be worse than not responding. I think it is important to say this, and I hope you will read it.

The last time you disowned me (and everyone else), I decided I was not going to contact you until the divorce was done and the house secured. After that, I would reach out to you. I was thinking even then that I would say that it has to be different; that it can't always be me walking on eggshells trying not to set you off. By the time it was over, I was tired, and I didn't have it in me to reach out to you. Maybe it was because I could not believe that it would change, where you would try harder. It was always your way or the highway.

After the big one, where you didn't speak to me for two and a half years, I was so happy when you told me you wanted to start over, and so full of love for you, I did not even think about how you didn't say that you were sorry. I did know that if we ever fought again, there would be no coming back from it. That is why I was always remembering to send you messages about things you would find interesting, or finding things to say in conversation that backed up what you were saying, even though you would still contradict me. That was exhausting. Every time I would see e-mail from you I would get this knot in my stomach, wondering what it was now, even knowing that I had just written recently and it was probably just a reply. That's what having a relationship with you is like.

I want to be clear that I do love you. I don't even really feel angry at you, but if I look at the strength that I have and the strength that you take, I can't do it.

If I had made different choices and my life was easier, maybe I could. That's on me.

If I thought that there could be any joy in it for me, or that even if it were very hard that it could do you good, I could find a way to keep you in my life. That part is on you. That is from you never putting your love for us above your pride.

And that you would just send us an e-mail stuffed with photos, with no message, with no apologies or expressions of concern or anything, and then expect us to respond to that, shows me that nothing has changed.

For the way you have been, you are lucky that Misty is willing to stay in touch with you. I hope you appreciate her, and try and be good to her.

Gina

This is what I got back:

Hello Gina,

Sending those pictures was an afterthought. My thought was to send them to Misty and she could forward them but it occurred to me I could send them direct. One point, I never disowned any of you. It was the other way around. I sent a letter to each of you with the question of wanting to be in my life or not and all, with the exception of Lance said yes we want to be in your life. However that never happened. I am your father and you will never be out of my life. I do think about you all and what we are missing.

Dad

There was nothing to write back.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/03/disowning-scoreboard.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/02/always-somehow-wrong.html