Dealing with Anger

I am attempting not to filter my emotions on something that's tough for me to think about, much less talk about.  My Mother.  

I can separate feelings about her totally.  On the one hand, I am a mother and I know how completely tough and exhausting it can be.  She had 3 children, so her job was even tougher.  She was a fantastic mother.  She stayed home until we were in middle school and did everything for us.  She read to us, played outside with us, took us places, sewed our clothes, cooked cool things--and I have great childhood memories because of it.  

But, there's another part of me that's always a little angry at her.  You see, my Dad is one of my best friends.  We've always had that sort of relationship, with only a few small breaks here and there because of my stupidity with boys.  I look up to my Dad in everything and I think he is such a good man.  He would do anything to help anyone and he loves his 3 children more than anything.  My grandmother says, "Your Daddy, now he was a fool for you kids."  You have to hear that in her deep southern drawl and hear the genuine emotion in those words to get it, but it's true nonetheless.  My mother is not a very affectionate person.  She's never talked about why, but I suspect it has a lot to do with her relationship with her father.  From what I know about him, he was not so nice and didn't have much to do with his kids.  It seems he felt that they were mostly good for working.  Like I said, I don't know what happened or what made her crawl up into herself the way she has, but she's there.  She's been like this for a long time.  My father is always trying to please her and love her, but she's very resistant.  I've watched him hurt from this my entire life, but I know that there's nothing I, as a daughter, can do to fix that for him.  So, hurting my father is one thing that I've always held against her and been pretty angry about.

Now, I'm grown and I have a family of my own, but I do live on the acre of land right next to them.  So, we're still very involved in each other lives.  Thankfully they aren't the kind of parents who want to pry into your life.  They're really very cool to live next to.  But, living next to them I know some things that I might not otherwise know if I lived across town.  I'm pretty sure my Mom is an alcoholic and that really bothers me.  She NEVER drank in front of me when I was younger and I'm really not sure she drank at all.  But, sometime while I was in high school or maybe college, my parents joined a tennis and fitness club and met some richy friends.  It started off pretty slowly from what I've noticed.  She would have a beer after tennis or a drink or 2 if they all went out together.  Then, they got really tight with about 5 couples.  They hang out a lot and take at least one cruise together each year.  Well, these folks really drink heavily.  My mom started that as well when they would go out.  Then, it moved to drinking at home.  At first, there would be a bottle of wine or 2 at the house and she'd have a glass with dinner.  Now, years later, she can drink an entire bottle of wine and think nothing of it.  And, she fixes herself a mixed drink nearly as soon as she comes home.  Last night they invited us for dinner and I'm sure she had 4 vodka cranberries in the 2 hours that I was there.  And my Dad tells me that she really doesn't care what she drinks because she's just drinking to get drunk.

I'm worried about her.  Part of me wants to cry about it and part of me wants to smack her and tell her to WAKE up and realize what she's doing to herself.  I know she's taking years off of her life.  And then there's the issue of Carter.  Right now he's pretty oblivious, but soon he's going to realize what's going on and he'll realize that she acts different sometimes.  She does not take well to anyone telling her what to do or how to live her life, so confronting her about it seems like a way only to divide us from each other.  But there is going to be a point when I have to tell her that I don't want her to drink (and especially be drunk!) in front of my child.  How will I deal with that?  She's acting like such a child and I just won't have her influencing my son that way.  His relationship with her is so sweet and it hurts me to think that she may choose alcohol over him.