HolidayHell1218-05--I feel sorry for the mom!

[katarain]

I was just rereading the updated Holiday Hell page on the website, and the last story STILL makes me feel badly for the mother.  Sure, she shouldn't have blamed her travel problems on her daughter, but spending the night in the airport is NO fun.  I somehow doubt that she was adverse to getting a hotel room, and would have if she could have.  Also, I can understand her not wanting to wake up her daughter.  She probably assumed that they had eaten and gone to sleep at a normal time, as most any person would.  I don't have any sympathy for the daughter having waited until midnight to eat.  That's just ridiculous.  If someone is traveling to your house, once their 1-2 hours late, it's perfectly acceptable to go eat.  Waiting any longer is

I just picture this woman trying to go visit her daughter, when things are so strained between them, with high hopes for the trip, and then ending up being stranded in the airport crying her eyes out and not wanting to be a bother.  And THEN when she finally gets through the night, she has a nasty message from her daughter, who simply thinks her mother is being inconsiderate and doesn't even imagine the POSSIBILITY that something might be wrong.  A daughter who is ANGRY at being inconvenienced and too selfish to even imagine that her mother has been through an ordeal.  So the mother tries to call her daughter, and they're not answering the phone.  I'm sorry, this is pretty ridiculous, too.  Did they turn off the ringer or something?  Are they just THAT heavy of sleepers? If so... fine.. whatever.  But the mother doesn't get an answer, and feeling quite wronged, her calls escalate as each one isn't answered.

I can't blame her for taking a flight back home, and as a final act, the daughter calls the mother and calls HER rude!  (Even if the mother SHOULD have called the daughter, her intentions were good and should be considered.)  And I know--maybe they had a toxic relationship, but on the basis of this situation alone, I put all of the blame on the daughter.  The mother's view of the situation might have been skewed afterwards, but I'm sorry... I just can't condemn her.

[platys]

That story confused me as well - didn't they know the flight the mom was on?  I would have called the airlines/checked the flight status online, saw it was delayed, and went "oh, guess we'll be going out to eat on our own!"  Although it is odd that the mom didn't call to say that her flight had finally arrived, even if it was midnight.

But, it seems like a lot of poor communication on both sides.

[Clara Bow]

I think the mother should have called as soon as she got in...but I don't understand why the daughter got so mad. Flights come in late, the world is an imperfect place. All she had to say on that message was that mom should call her as soon as she got in, regardless of the time.
I think the daughter was kind of expecting things to go bad, a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Thipu1]

I have a problem with both sides on this one. We aren't given the age or physical capacity of the mother and that can make a big difference.  Mr. Thipu's mom is in her late 80s.  She's still strong but she tends to think of travel as it 'should be' instead of 'how it is'.  Before she came out for the family Thanksgiving in the Upper Midwest, we had to hammer into her head the following:

1) She should NOT pack a big carry-on and expect that to be all she needs.  Take a little tote with essentials and check everything else.

2) She should have her cell-phone, with all applicable numbers close to hand, and a valid credit card on her person at all times while travelling.  (In the past, Mom has been known to check her wallet). You never know when you might have to make a call.  You never know when you might have to book an emergency hotel room.  Be prepared.

3)  She must give all concerned parties full information about her flights.  If she does that, we can monitor them and adjust our plans accordingly.

4) I sincerely doubt that there was no way for the airline to get this lady better accomodations than the airport.  We've been stranded by snow-storms in crowded airports after Thanksgiving or New Years Day and always found a comfortable bed.

I aslo have to fault the daughter on several counts.  Many things other than a plane crash could have caused her mother to arrive late.  The daughter, IMO should have done the following"

1)  Make sure she knew all of Mom's flight numbers,  monitored the flights and called the airline to ask about the flight as soon as things started looking iffy.

2)  Not waited a meal for an inordinately long time.  The family can wait a bit but not forever.  Serve the meal and put aside a portion for Mom to eat when she arrives. 

I sense a certain friction between Mom and Daughter that goes deeper than a delayed flight and a botched phone call.  There's a nastiness in that post that I really don't like to see.  As I said in the beginning of my post, a lot would depend on the age and the physical abilities of the visiting mother.  I'd worry about Mom who is in her late 80s.  If I was her son, I wouldn't worry about his Mom who is about 60 and has recently taken a week-long kayak trip to Glacier Bay in Alaska.  It all depends.       


 

 

   

   

[VorFemme]

There are enough issues here for both parties.

Daughter *should* have realized that planes can be delayed without crashing.  Weather, equipment failures, or the previous leg that plane flew could have delayed boarding and departure for her mother's flight.  Having the airline and flight number would have allowed her to CHECK with the airline to see what was going on.

The mother of a woman old enough to be married should be old enough to know all of the above AND be prepared with a credit card or cash for a cab or hotel.  Certainly she could have carried change or a calling card to let her phone from the airport if departure was delayed or if there was a delay between two legs of a flight - even if she didn't have a cell phone.

If her mother was so coddled by her father and husband as to be incapable of thinking about these things herself - the DD would have known THAT as well. 

I tend to think the "self fulfilling prophecy of disaster" comment by an earlier poster has my vote.  Neither of them was planning how to have this visit work out and reconcile unless EVERYTHING went exactly as planned.  Having the flight delayed, for any reason, turned out to be exactly what was secretly anticipated - a REASON for the visit to be ruined without either of them having to BLAME themselves for things not working out.  It was all "Murphy's" fault (as in Murphy's law - what can go wrong, will).

Mom didn't anticipate and plan ahead on how to handle any of the quite common things that could happen.  The daughter didn't realize that whatever had happened was probably not her mother's fault (unless Mom blew up the plane or put sugar in the gas tank or called in a bomb threat) so she *might* need to do a little more than turn on the tv or radio to see if there had been any planes crash. 

[Tabris]

You know, even without a flight number, I've been able to check on arrival and departure times. Giving them a rough approximation of the incoming flight time has at least twice enabled airline representatives to figure out the flight number of the flight I needed information on.

It sounds like Mom had a martyr complex, though. Oh, I would never dream of bothering you. I'll just sit here and freeze to death in discomfort...

Edited to add: and then of course, when you fail to NOTICE that I played the martyr, I'll get enraged at you for not coming to my rescue. It's a very typical martyr ploy.  No wonder the relationship was strained.

[Balletmom]

A sad story on all a parts, with a lot of baggage carried in more ways than one by both parties...

[Clara Bow]

It sounds like Mom had a martyr complex, though. Oh, I would never dream of bothering you. I'll just sit here and freeze to death in discomfort...

Edited to add: and then of course, when you fail to NOTICE that I played the martyr, I'll get enraged at you for not coming to my rescue. It's a very typical martyr ploy.  No wonder the relationship was strained.

Oh there is definitely some tyranny of the weak going on here...on both sides...thanks Venus for the phrase. I've adopted it fully....

[Clearbrite]

I havent seen the story as yet,so cant comment my feelings/thoughts about what the story said..but just from what you said,yes,i cant understand a daughter getting angry and nasty to her mother.

Granted,i have a great relationship with my mum,and obviously,others in this world arent quite as lucky..but to me,if that situation came about with my mum..i'ld be worried sick to death as to where or what had happened to my mum,and would be starting to ring the airport/s to try and get some info and track her down!

Despite a rocky relationship or not,what about if something really bad did happen to the mother while travelling?

Perhaps both parties went about things the wrong way..but to cut off the phone,and just get angry instead of starting to worry as to where your mum is..that cant be 'right'?

I'll have to go reading now..

Take care

Clare
:0)

[Lunadiana75]

Quote from story: 

"We woke up at ten to three messages arriving between eight and eight thirty. My mother had had a six hour flight delay and had arrived at midnight. She'd packed a carry on that was far too large and it had to be checked in with her cell in it. She claimed that it was too late to get a room at one of the many 24-hour motels, so she had spent the night in the airport crying, not wanting to call because she knew I was asleep. She began placing all the blame squarely on me. I shouldn't have gotten angry, I should have called her before she got on the plane, I should have stayed up later and woken up sooner.   The second message was largely the same with sobbing. The third started out with a screaming, crying rant about how cruel and irresponsible I was. She announced that she had bought tickets back home (across the country) and would be flying out immediately as she was obviously not wanted. I called, but she was already on the plane."

This quote says a lot about the Mother's behavior.  I smell a dramaqueen of the first order. 

I have a Martyr Mother myself, eventually you get completely fed up with the behavior and you have to be firm, even harsh, to save your sanity.  To outsiders, things you do and say may sound mean, but you have to consider the years of guilt tripping, manipulation and same old drama different day that are probably behind this story.  My Mother is notorious for setting up situations where she can play the poor abused Mother and make me the "horrible ungrateful daughter".  I refuse to play into these anymore. 

[katarain]

Well, I suppose ya'll are right that the mother isn't innocent in all of this.  But still, it could have been prevented if the daughter had not assumed malicious intent from the beginning, or simply called the airport, as another poster said.

The trouble with habitual martyrdom is the same trouble with crying wolf.  When there is a legitimate problem, people think you're faking it.  Maybe this is what happened to the mother--but maybe not.  We don't know at this point.  In this situation, apart from any history, I have more sympathy for the mom.  Maybe it's because I can relate to the feeling that things outside of my control have all gone wrong, and sometimes making bad decisions about things like not calling because I might wake someone up, and how terrible and put upon I'd feel if someone called to yell at me when I'd already been through hell and had tried to spare them some trouble.  If, however, I was quite the drama queen anyway, I could understand having less sympathy for my situation.

[Tabris]

Not calling and waking someone up--but this was a case of being stranded at the airport when a) she knew she was expected and b) she knew her daughter is a night-owl. We're not talking about the mother learning at two o'clock in the morning that her sister had died and not calling the daughter until it was morning. We're talking about someone who remained at an airport rather than look for a hotel, didn't call when she could have, and the mysteriously was able to call three times within an hour getting progressively more hysterical each time.

We don't know the history, but it's entirely possible the mother and daughter had primed one another fo rthat kind of relationship. It does seem that each was waiting for the other to do something spectacular to come in and rescue the situation.

Does anyone else find it odd that the mother *planned* to stay at a motel and yet never called a cab to bring her to that motel?

I smell fish here. The mother didn't give her daughter the flight number and didn't call when she could have, didn't try to get to the motel she had supposedly reserved, and then got back on a plane before her daughter had a chance to talk to her **at Christmastime**? When flights are so overbooked already that people who legitimately ahve tickets are being bumped?

She might not even have been at the airport. She might well have set up the entire thing so her daughter was the bad guy, never bought herself a ticket, never flew out to see the daughter, and then called her screaming to give the woman a guilt trip. Yes, that's a reach, but it also fits the story we've been given.

[katarain]

Wow! You're right. She might have been at home the entire time.  You make good points.  And that would make a good story.  I had an "ooooooooooooooooh! what if???" moment. Heh..

[Tabris]

Wow! You're right. She might have been at home the entire time.  You make good points.  And that would make a good story.  I had an "ooooooooooooooooh! what if???" moment. Heh..

See, that's why I write fiction. Because I have a devious mind and like to make people eeeeeevil!