Well, it finally arrived....

The dreaded Christmas package from NM for ds. I was sitting on my living room sofa on Monday afternoon when I heard a "Plop!" on the front porch of a package. I knew immediately that it would be from NM. I had hoped that since it was so close to Christmas with no word from her by that point that it meant NM had finally given up. No such luck. Damn.

I brought it inside and tried to decide what to do. Return to sender? Throw it in the trash? I was going to go the "return to sender" route at first but thought it would likely only cause unwanted drama with NM. More to the point, it would give her more ammo to further her victim status and I'll be damned if I'm going to help her with that. Then I moved onto contemplating just tossing it away. I asked dh what he thought and he actually brought up a really good point.

Back when I was much younger, apparently my dad and half bro sent a few things over the years, completely unbeknownst to me. I guess my NM and NHS had intercepted the items and gotten rid of them without telling me and then lied to me whenever I'd ask if there was anything for me from my dad, etc. I didn't find this out until years later and it resulted in much hurt, anger and resentment toward my NM. Dh said that if we didn't give the items to ds and he later found out NM had been sending stuff - and you KNOW NM would love only too much to be the bearer of that news - it could cause him to resent us later on and, worse still, to doubt our word and make NM's word more credible. Definitely NOT what we want.

So, after discussing the matter, dh and I decided that we'd pre-screen any packages that come and pass along what we deem okay to ds.

Considering the crap NM sends, she's certainly not going to endear herself to ds anytime soon. This year's Xmas gift consisted of two cheap plastic "Ben 10" action figures and a Pez candy dispenser from some show that I've never ever heard of. Attached was a cheap Xmas card that read simply, "Merry Christmas, Love Grandma XXXX".

While simply having to touch the items made my skin crawl (literally), it also made me rather sad because it made it clear that NM doesn't know ds at all. If she cared to know him at all, she'd know he isn't really into action figures and doesn't even like "Ben 10". He's far more into creative things, things he can build or use his imagination with. Things like arts and crafts, musical instruments, Play-Doh play kits, Legos, those type of things. When I mentioned this to dh, he said,"Well to be fair, she hasn't spoken to us or seen ds in almost a year now." I said, "So? My half sister, L, has never met ds yet she seems to send appropriate gifts all the time for him. Same goes for my dad and SM who also send stuff he likes. The fact is that NM doesn't care and has NO idea what makes kids tick whatsoever and doesn't CARE to know either."

As of right now, NM's "gift" is under the tree. I've been tempted a couple times to just grab it and toss it into the trash but then I think of what dh said and I know he makes a good point and so I put the gift back under the tree. At any rate, like dh said, when ds opens NM's crappy gift, he's going to care about it as much as he would a pair of socks. (Especially considering some of the other gifts he'll be getting this year, like a Nintendo DS he's been asking for forever.)

And some day, when we run into NM and she asks ds, "Has your mom been giving you the gifts I've been sending all these years?", he can say, "Yes." and it will be the truth. And then he can (hopefully) tell her that if she wants to be a part of his life, she should have been around all those years and been willing to suck it up and come visit him at our house instead of walking away since she couldn't have everything the way SHE wanted.

One thing's for sure, ds is a very smart little guy, even at the young age of (nearly) 5 years old. If NM thinks she's going to put one over on him and turn him against me with her twisted version of the truth someday, she's got another thing coming. ;)