Guilt

I read a lot of books. Mostly mindless ones that involve lots of things I can't talk about here. My favorite series is the Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich. So far, there are 15 and I've read every single one; some more than once. Stephanie is from New Jersey and has a devout Catholic mother who is forever crossing herself. And drinking. In every book, she references the guilt trips her mom puts on her and somehow ties it to her Catholic faith. Usually, she'll bribe her with food to get Stephanie to do what she wants, but when food fails, guilt comes through.

My granny is a Southern Baptist and the woman can lay on the guilt like she's icing a three layer cake with a gallon of buttercream. Granny's weapon of choice is sickness.

Two years ago, The Colonel (as papa and I refer to her) fell deathly ill and was hospitalized. She had double pneumonia, a ruptured spleen she suffered from falling off the bed, and was in kidney failure. Before that, she had diverticulitis- which is a condition in which your intestines get in a hot mess and you risk rupture, massive infection, and sometimes death. To put it mildly, when she gets sick, she is in bad shape. Not once during this entire time did she ask me to come home. She would just say that she was really not feeling well and for me to keep my mind on schoolwork. I always learned of the severity of her problems after she had recovered.

Two weeks ago I was going on a girl's dinner date when I decided to call granny up and see how things were. As she does at some point during every conversation, she asked me when I was coming home. When I told her that it might be two weeks before I made it home again, she broke out the buttercream and trowel. "Oh... ok. I've just not been feeling too good. I think it might be because of the diverticulitis." The diverticulitis? The case of it that she had a year and a half ago? Didn't the doctor say she was fully recovered? As the wheels turned in my mind, a smile crept onto my face. She's at it again. Guilt tripping me into going home. A novice at this game would have rushed home, knowing the severity of the condition, but I had recently discovered her guise and had armed my defenses.

Around the time that the pollen struck this spring, Granny came down with a cold. She called me one day and I could barely recognize her voice. "Hey baby, when you coming home?" I told her it would be another week or so before I came home. "Oh. Okay. I think I'm going to see Dan today. This stuff might turn into pneumonia if I don't." See a pattern here? See what she does? She likes to use past serious illnesses to get me home. I told her that I'd be coming home two weekends in a row, for 3 days each time beginning the weekend after next. Presto. Her voice was a clear as a bell and she sounded so gleeful I expected her to break out into song. No more cold. You see, when she finally gets her way, these sicknesses magically disappear. She tells me that I am the only thing that makes her feel better. Does it get any thicker?

As I grow older, I find myself more and more like The Colonel. I use my ailments to my advantage, and if I think throwing a guilt trip out there will get me my way, I'll do it in a heartbeat. Even my friends are catching on and turning the tables on me. Sometimes I wish I could tell Stephanie Plum to eat her cake, take her grandma to the weekly viewings at the funeral home, or just have kids already. Whatever guilt trip her mom lays on her is nothing compared to the stunts granny can pull. Those Baptists really know how it's done.