My parents have the virus this whole thing is about. This is not too surprising since they are both about eighty and on immunization at least #3.
What did surprise me was this. I had been going to visit them for Easter, a 5-hour trip, and they called at 11.30 in the morning (hours after I should have left home) to ask whether I were on the train yet? You see, they had just tested positive. Not that I had known, but they had both been sick during the week. They had already been sick earlier on Friday morning when it might have been sensible to warn me not to come. Their symptoms could not be more classic: fever - head cold - sore throat - coughing, sneezing. Of all diseases this might have been, why not assume the obvious? But no, my mother maintained it had been "just a cold" because she had got a negative result on MONDAY! All the same she had been too ill to attend a family lunch on Wednesday. My father had gone to the lunch. Then they had both been at church on Thursday night. The only reason they had bothered to take the test is that one of the cousins from the lunch had called on Friday to tell them she had the virus and they had better find out if they did too.
So I was spared the visit at short notice. But this jars somewhat. It felt as though they were blithely unconcerned about their child's wellbeing. Why assume everything was okey-dokey when they have been following the narrative so faithfully all along and here was what they had been fearing?
Then it dawned on me that perhaps they have an exceptionalist mindset in general. Sorry, folks, if this seems naive to you: having known them for half a century one might think I understood such matters. But I still lack a certain analytical distance in spite of all the years of therapy to counter the emotional abuse. I'd tentatively posit they are both narcissists masquerading as good Catholics and responsible adults. I remember another case where that attitude of special pleading manifested. It was during lockdown last year. My father and another cousin wanted to go from city 1 to city 3 on a (frivolous, given the circumstances) trip to a war memorial. City 2 was on their way and closed to non-residents. But they drove through it each way nonetheless.
Now this brings me to reconsider the time I was nine and got appendicitis. It was on the last Friday of school holidays. I was not a mendacious child but the timing was sufficient reason for my parents to disbelieve I was actually sick. They let me languish for two days, and my appendix burst before they thought maybe I was telling the truth.
Everyone, I am not telling a story for sympathy so much as curious whether any of you have witnessed this kind of denial? In their case it appears to be a consistent lifelong trait that simply stands out more in the current circumstances of moral panic over safety
And, big sister erika, I got to the party several weeks too late, not for the first time, only to hear whispers, echoes and sighs in the empty room: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/169953.html?thread=26822625#cmt26822625 It led me to think of the peculiar case of the opshop (not-for-profit) where I have been volunteering. Money comes in from sales and grants, surplus money is supposedly distributed to community causes. The place has been allegedly operating at a loss but the person who runs the association somehow makes a living from it. Unlike other regular associations of this kind, there seem to be no members, a strange lack of elections and AGMs, and a permanent committee. Not to claim I understand what is going on here, but one can only suppose there is a creative consiglieri in the background.
Then I heard your voice for real! on your April Fools' Day podcast! And I did understand you!
behaviour and denial
My parents have the virus this whole thing is about. This is not too surprising since they are both about eighty and on immunization at least #3.
What did surprise me was this. I had been going to visit them for Easter, a 5-hour trip, and they called at 11.30 in the morning (hours after I should have left home) to ask whether I were on the train yet? You see, they had just tested positive. Not that I had known, but they had both been sick during the week. They had already been sick earlier on Friday morning when it might have been sensible to warn me not to come. Their symptoms could not be more classic: fever - head cold - sore throat - coughing, sneezing. Of all diseases this might have been, why not assume the obvious? But no, my mother maintained it had been "just a cold" because she had got a negative result on MONDAY! All the same she had been too ill to attend a family lunch on Wednesday. My father had gone to the lunch. Then they had both been at church on Thursday night. The only reason they had bothered to take the test is that one of the cousins from the lunch had called on Friday to tell them she had the virus and they had better find out if they did too.
So I was spared the visit at short notice. But this jars somewhat. It felt as though they were blithely unconcerned about their child's wellbeing. Why assume everything was okey-dokey when they have been following the narrative so faithfully all along and here was what they had been fearing?
Then it dawned on me that perhaps they have an exceptionalist mindset in general. Sorry, folks, if this seems naive to you: having known them for half a century one might think I understood such matters. But I still lack a certain analytical distance in spite of all the years of therapy to counter the emotional abuse. I'd tentatively posit they are both narcissists masquerading as good Catholics and responsible adults. I remember another case where that attitude of special pleading manifested. It was during lockdown last year. My father and another cousin wanted to go from city 1 to city 3 on a (frivolous, given the circumstances) trip to a war memorial. City 2 was on their way and closed to non-residents. But they drove through it each way nonetheless.
Now this brings me to reconsider the time I was nine and got appendicitis. It was on the last Friday of school holidays. I was not a mendacious child but the timing was sufficient reason for my parents to disbelieve I was actually sick. They let me languish for two days, and my appendix burst before they thought maybe I was telling the truth.
Everyone, I am not telling a story for sympathy so much as curious whether any of you have witnessed this kind of denial? In their case it appears to be a consistent lifelong trait that simply stands out more in the current circumstances of moral panic over safety
And, big sister erika, I got to the party several weeks too late, not for the first time, only to hear whispers, echoes and sighs in the empty room: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/169953.html?thread=26822625#cmt26822625
It led me to think of the peculiar case of the opshop (not-for-profit) where I have been volunteering. Money comes in from sales and grants, surplus money is supposedly distributed to community causes. The place has been allegedly operating at a loss but the person who runs the association somehow makes a living from it. Unlike other regular associations of this kind, there seem to be no members, a strange lack of elections and AGMs, and a permanent committee. Not to claim I understand what is going on here, but one can only suppose there is a creative consiglieri in the background.
Then I heard your voice for real! on your April Fools' Day podcast! And I did understand you!
iridescent scintillating elver