Phone call with the other mother

Today was a home day for us. It was supposed to be uneventful, but it turned out to be not so uneventful in the end due to the other mother! It started with me sending her an email and asking for her help with yaincoa and watching what he eats as requested by the doctor (he is between overweight and obese and we have been trying to get his weight down for a year now, but the wicked witch does nothing to help us and does not believe the doctor). He has to complete a weekly ‘menu’ of what he has eaten each day so that he can become aware of healthy eating and so that the doctor can also see what he is eating. We complete ours every week, but despite sending the information to the wicked with about 3 times now, she has never done one, and continues to give him food hat he shouldn’t be eating (i.e., chocolate waffles, chocolate croissants etc). The doctor specifically asked Yain to complete it during his weeks with his mother, and for this I sent her the message via email and text. The following week when we got yaincoa and I asked him if he had completed his menu with his mom he said no, and when I asked why he told me that his mother had told him not to complete it, she didn’t want him to. This plus the fact that she phoned us on Monday to tell us Yain was sick, however when we got him home in the middle of the day, he was clearly not sick. She claimed he had a “temperature” of 37.2 and a really bad cough. He had no temperature and did not cough once, but quite ‘coincidentally’ he had not done his homework on the weekend that was due that day. I was fuming with her and sent her an email to say that although we try and try, she refuses to do anything for us or for Yaincoa. She made a few comments about me to xavi resulting in me sending her a message this morning. She phoned me and we had an argument. She started off trying to be all sweet and serene saying that she didn’t have any problems with us. After a few minutes she was calling xavi a liar ad telling me that we were damaging and traumatising Yaincoa. A few minutes she was childishly trying to make comments about my parents. After that she was then claiming that we are envious and jealous of her and her life. She then swiftly started to insult me and finally she finished the conversation by doing that thing we all did when we were twelve years old by putting on a mock sing song voice while you taunt the other person and then she put the phone down on my ear as I was asking if she as actually 12 years old. What did I say? I told her that xavi was no liar as the truth was that she has never taken her son to the dentist, or the doctors in at least the last 2 years and that she hasn’t paid his support. I told her that she will have to explain to yaincoa one day why she is leaving him with her parents after everything she has said about them, I reminded her that if yaincoa has any issues about body it is probably due to the fact that she told him he has a fat stomach and that at 7 years old she was teaching him how to do sit ups, or the fact that even though he knows he shouldn’t be eating chocolate doughnuts, she keeps buying them for him. I laughed out loud when she said I was jealous of her! I was shaking when I got off the phone but I also felt a huge weight being lifted off my shoulders. Wicked witch and I have spoken once before on the phone and it went more or less the same way – she just continually speaks and I lose all hope with life!

I realised something that I had slowly started to realise before. Wicked witch is incredibly childish! I think this is due to the fact that she has no argument, she is not right, and deep down she knows it although she would never admit it. So when you call her up on something, she tries to throw it straight back at you. Remember when you were in school and you would say something to someone in a fight and they would simply answer the same thing straight back at you? That is her. I also realised with great sadness that she will never ever change. As many times as we try with her and as many different way that we try, she remains the same. This is not good news for yaincoa or for us.

But xavi and I discussed all of this during this week and we have both realised that nothing will change with her. We are trying one more time with the lawyers and after that is she remains the same which I suspect that she will, then we will simply continue doing everything we can for yaincoa and hope that the good we are trying to do will combat the bad that she is doing. We cannot keep wasting our energies with her. I can only hope that one day she may realise all of this and start to do everything that yaincoa deserves from his mother.

A little boy in danger??

In the beginning of my relationship with xavi I always felt a little bit sorry for yaincoa for having a very small family. He had his daddy and his mommy and Xavi’s parents with whom yaincoa spent almost every weekend. He is very close to his grandparents for this. But that was it. Xavi’s brother died in a car accident when xavi was 16, so yaincoa didn’t have an uncle and therefore no cousins. On the upside he did get to know the children of Xavi’s cousins who he gets to see every now and then, but not too often. But that is it for family on Xavi’s side.

The side of the mother, the wicked witch, is bigger. She has her mother, her father, a sister and 2 brothers. However not too long after Yaincoa was born, she cut off all contact with them. Up until last year, she told yaincoa that her parents died in an airplane crash. I think that this was totally unnecessary as it may give fears to a child about airplanes without any reason. Why not simply say that they lived in a different country so he couldn’t see them. Why did she cut off all contact with her family? The story she told Xavi and many, many of her friends is that her father abused her when she was a child and that her mother knew what was going on and simply turned a blind eye. When I heard this story I honestly did not know whether to believe it. I still don’t. For a start, if something like this has happened to you, it is not something that you go around telling everyone. It is something you are ashamed by and something you keep to yourself only telling a very few people. Why tell so many friends? Then I wondered why did she wait until she was 30 years old to cut them off? Why not sooner? Then I thought well ok, I can understand not talking to your parents, but why would you also cut off your 2 brothers and your sister? On the other hand I thought it would probably explain some of the wicked witch’s issues.

I felt bad for yaincoa as he had 2 uncles, and aunt and possible cousins that he didn’t even know. His childhood could have been different. He could have had many more family moments and had more of an idea of family and uncles, aunts, cousins etc. But I didn’t think about it much more until last year.

We were sitting on a terrace outside a bar having a juice with yaincoa when suddenly there was one of wicked witch’s brothers. Xavi and Arturo greeted each other like long lost friends, briefly commenting on the wicked witch and the difficulty xavi has with her. Arturo made a comment along the lines of he knew exactly how his sister was.  Xavi then introduced Arturo to Yaincoa saying ‘this is mommy’s brother’. Arturo then mentioned that he was going to visit his mother and father in front of Yaincoa. The same mother and father that wicked witch had previously explained died in an airplane crash. Me and xavi were both watching Yain thinking ‘shit, shit, shit! How is he going to accept this? What is he going to think? Does he remember the story about his grandparents dying in an airplane crash? Has he realised that Arturo’s parents are his grandparents? What has wicked witch said about her brother? Does he even know he has an uncle? Does he even understand?’ yaincoa didn’t really seem to understand. Xavi gently mentioned the airplane crash, but (thankfully) yaincoa did not seem to remember anything! I told xavi that it was best and as far as his uncle was concerned, maybe he didn’t really get it, maybe he didn’t know it was his uncle as his idea of family had been mommy, daddy, grandparents. We didn’t say anything more to yaincoa as we didn’t want to open up a hornets’ nest.

The following week wicked witch received the court papers from us to her for not paying her share of the custody. She went ballistic and she then contacted her other brother Alberto. Xavi had heard that Yaincoa had met this brother and so he sent him and email congratulating him on the birth of his daughter and saying that he was very happy that Yaincoa was getting to know them all. Wicked witch had apparently already managed to weave her web around this brother as he never replied and when we met him he never said a word to us, despite us greeting him.

Over time we then heard that Yaincoa had met the mother of wicked witch. Xavi felt a little unsure about this one as wicked witch had said many bad things about her. After making contact with her own mother, wicked witch phoned Xavi’s mom and called her own mother a whore saying that she didn’t want to be with her and she didn’t want to leave yaincoa with her, but then she would organise to meet up with her mother and Yaincoa in the park on various occasions. She was playing everyone. Xavi accepted this as from what he could hear; they never been to the grandparents flat.

Then the Christmas holidays came. By this time we had heard how yaincoa had been with his uncle Alberto on many occasions. We discovered that most days of the holidays that he was with his mother; she left him with his grandmother in the flat with his grandfather. This is the same man who apparently abused her as a child. Through conversation we discovered that wicked witch did not enter the flat. This has continued throughout January.

So it seems that she herself would not enter the flat supposedly for what her father did to her, but yes she would leave her only child in the flat with a supposed abuser and the woman who apparently turned a blind eye to the whole thing?

We could not believe it. Xavi phoned her and asked her what was going on, and asked if her stories about her father were true. She confirmed that yes, they were! When xavi asked how it was possible that she was taking yaincoa to the flat of this man, her response was that it was because Xavi didn’t help her (total crap, she hadn’t even asked) and because Xavi’s parents live far away – 1.5hrs away, not exactly far away. Now I am sure that everyone agrees that there is no reason on this earth that you would leave your child in the house of a man who you claim abused you. NEVER and for no reason at all. Especially not as she never asked xavi for help and because she has been taking yaincoa to Xavi’s parents for 8 years, they haven’t moved, they live where they have always lived. Nothing has changed.  You would take your child to any other place other than the flat of a supposed abuser.

The other side of the coin is what if she was lying? What is she cut off contact with her family for some other reason and she then made up the story as she always likes to play the victim in every situation? What if she denied her parent’s access to their grandson or some other reason? And what if she was going around all of Barcelona telling people her father was an abuser. What kind of person would do that? What kind of person would make up that story about her family and about herself? Why would you lie and tell people you were abused as a child when you weren’t? What must be wrong in your head to do that?

So here we are in the position of not knowing whether Xavi’s son is spending time in the house of a possible abuser or not.

Or whether the mother of yaincoa is so messed up she would make up these stories.

We have sent an email to wicked witch’s brother explain and asking him if this is true or not. We don’t know what else to do. Do you send the other brother the same email; do you send the mother the same message, or the other sister? Or will wicked witch just say that xavi is lying to try to hurt her.

Lawyers can’t do anything either, there are no reports against the father.

So can someone please tell me what the hell are we supposed to do?