As mentioned in an earlier post, I used to read the newspaper advice columns religiously. As regularly as I attended daily mass at my Roman Catholic grade school, and with a great deal more religious fervor, I read Ann Landers in the morning paper and Dear Abbey in the evening news. And because I have a quirky, persnickety memory, some of those columns have remained in my head forever.
I particularly recall one that related to a young couple who had requested that no very small infants be brought to their wedding. This was a hot topic at the time: Do babies so young that they will likely cry and disrupt the wedding service actually belong at a wedding, or not? This young woman and her fiancé had chosen “not”, and she and her husband had been paying for it ever since.
The husband’s sister, it seemed, had borne a child just shortly before the wedding, and was resentful of the young couple’s decision. She’d contrived a very specific revenge. Since the sister’s home and yard were the largest, all family gatherings and holidays were held there. Her brother and his wife had been excluded from every get-together since their wedding. The angry sister refused to have them in her home. Being continually excluded from his own family gatherings broke the young man’s heart, and his wife was wracked with guilt, blaming herself for their ostracism.
I don’t recall now what the advice columnist’s response was, but I certainly knew what my own reply would have been, and to this day I wish I’d sent in my retort to the newspaper regarding the vengeful sister’s behavior. It might have gone something like this:
Dear A,
In response to the young woman and her husband who were excluded from all family gatherings after requesting that no small babies be brought to their wedding ceremony, my question is: Does no one in this family have a spine?!
Here’s the salient point: Babies are a surefire draw for attention, and Little Sister just couldn’t STAND the thought of not stealing her brother’s thunder on his wedding day. I would be willing to bet my next paycheck that Little Sis has been the spoiled darling of the family her whole life. She just couldn’t abide not being the center of attention, even at her own brother’s wedding.
But to make him and his new wife pay for her petty narcissism by ostracizing them from every family gathering from thence onward is taking spitefulness to an entirely new level! How long does the average wedding and reception last? Four or five hours? And how many times has the young couple been excluded from family events, times the number of hours? Every July 4th, every Memorial and Labor Day celebration, every Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner? Four or five hours each, multiplied by the years that this nastiness has gone on, equals what? The spoiled little princess has gotten her payback with a vengeance, along with thousands in interest.
Someone in this family of spineless wonders needs to stand up to this narcissistic little shrew and say, “Enough already! You’ve gotten your revenge. Now act like the adult you supposedly are and make up with your brother and his wife. Otherwise, the next family gathering will be held at MY home, and the only one not invited will be YOU. And don’t give me that ‘you have the biggest home and yard’ crap. There isn’t any home or yard large enough if love is absent. Or have you never heard that proverb which begins, ‘Better a dinner of herbs where love is’?”
All these decades after reading that advice column, I still do wonder if someone in that family group ever got up the gumption to smack the spoiled princess upside her nasty, narcissistic, vengeful little head. Knowing families as I do, though, probably not. They were probably united in their resentment of the outsider who had upset their precious darling, and never forgave her brother for wanting his wedding day to be focused on him and his bride, rather than his spoiled sister.
But I do wish I’d written that letter.
Speaking to the Heart of Many Matters 