Family ties (or how you can choose your friends, but not your family)

Wednesday night time for some blogging.

As some of you know I spent last weekend in Germany. I was very reluctant to go and I was postponing the visit since Christmas. Now I felt I had no more excuses, I had to attend my brothers stepson's confirmation at church and the following party. I was afraid of questions about Erik, and I got them: people missed him and were asking me about him. But that was not the main reason why I was so afraid to go to see my folks:

My father died 18 years ago. My mother met a new partner a few years ago (4 years?). His name is Hans and the problem with him is, that he wants to be with my mother, but not with her sons, her family or her friends, while he expects her to be there for his family and friends. He uses excuses not to have contact with my brother, my mothers best friend or with me. In my case that would be that I am gay. Though my mother is pretty cool about my homosexuality, she tells me would say that he can't deal with it and that he doesn't wanna have to do anything to with me (nothing personally, of course ..... LOL). The worst thing is that my mother accepts all that rubbish, and though I think she felt all the time that I was not okay with that, I felt that I had to tell her as well. As you can imagine that is not a pretty subject to talk about with your mother, but last weekend I did. I felt I had to do that, no matter what here reaction would be. I can tell that she didn't like to hear what I had to say about it, but she also said that I was right, but that she feels that she has no other choice at the moment.

The other thing about my folks is, that my brother bought the house where I was raised (of course far below the real market price). My mother has the right to live there till her death. My mother on one side and my brother and his wife on the other side irritate each other a lot. My brother and his wife don't keep the house as my mother would do and expects them to do. It starts with cleaning, maintenance of house and garden and the contact with the neighbors. My mother on the other hand spoils my niece (her only granddaughter) and my brother and my sister in law want her to be harder for Nuria. When I come there they both want to drag me on their side. Something I don't want to of course.

Those are the little problems with my family in Germany. Sometimes I thin kit is really about nothing.

Three aspects were positive about the trip:

1. On my way to Germany I could meet up with my friend Joop, who lives in Spain nowadays. We were meeting in Eindhoven (with an other friend of his as well), where he was to celebrate his fathers birthday last Sunday with a surprise party. We could spend all afternoon together and in the evening we had dinner together as well. Time enough to catch up with things.
2. In Germany I did some shopping for stuff that I can't buy anywhere else. Bread, certain cheeses, toothpaste, and some stuff that's just cheaper in Germany like liquor.
3. I found out some surprising stuff about our family history in WWII. I'll blog about it later.