I hope everyone who celebrates Food Coma day had a good time. I call it Food Coma day because the entire evening after dinner is a blur of naps and playing Legos with my cousin’s kids.
We built pirate spaceships.
I hope everyone who celebrates Food Coma day had a good time. I call it Food Coma day because the entire evening after dinner is a blur of naps and playing Legos with my cousin’s kids.
Oh no…….. it’s going to go up in smoke. All of it.
“I” think that you are right, short term. But I also think that Mandy is pretty smart. I think she’ll figure it out as fast as Andi can explain it. G’ma Patty just tore off the bandaid, and now it will all get to heal with oxygen and air helping to kill the festering germs.
Lord! What a horrible analogy, I swear it was the mashed potatoes and the stuffing in my brain.
Happy Stuff Your Gob day!
Oh Jesus Andi. Your need for cathis, even if triggered by a horrible interaction with your mom, does NOT trump your responsibility as both a mother yourself and as a guest at SOMEONE EKSES XMAS to ensure your kid has as a good a first Xmas with her family as possible.
Now is NOT the time to ddrop this goddamned atom bomb if a revelation.
ESPECIALLY not to a kid who is on her own and doesn’t have the coping skills to handle this. she should have been told in a safe environment, bolstered ideally by professional support people and her dad.
Bad Andi. Very bad Andi. Selfish. No biscuit for you.
Way to ruin everyone’s Xmas by making it about you. >_<
At this point only other option would be to lie which would be worse. Unfortunate timing yea, I think the whole call was a mistake. But she’s making the best of it by being honest at last.
Amanda brought up the question if Pat was the one who lied. I dont consider Andi selfish here for telling the truth. What Amanda needs most is the truth. Plus as others have said Amanda is surrounded by other family who love her if she needs comfort after this bomb shell.
To lie to Amanda here or skirt around would only hurt Amanda right now cause she is already down cause of her grandma.
Andi has told Amanda several times infact the first timevthey meet she made so many mistakes by giving her up. I think Amanda will forgive her because for this too. Amanda wants her mom its all she ever wanted. Plus it will make for a perfect example for Amanda why little lies when your scared can hurt so much those you love.
I’m granting that yeah, this is gonna cause some problems — it was always going to do that — and also that, at this point, Andi has little choice. Lying is what got her into this; lying more made it worse; lying EVEN more is not going to solve this.
It’s kinda like what Dumbledore told Harry (very paraphrased): “If I thought I could spare you by making you wait, I would do that; but this needs to happen now, or it will be even worse later on.”
Oh dear… Amanda is going to know that everything she went through was because of Andi. That’s terrible..
I actually disagree with the sentiment so far on the comments. Good Andi – bad timing, but good for not lying any longer, for making sure Amanda knew the truth. Now *please* someone put counseling sessions in both of their stockings?
Being fair, when you say ‘comments’ it’s singular, as in, mine. :p and I don’t think that I ever implied Andi shouldn’t tell Amanda, just that she really ought to have been an adult about this and thought through timing rather than blurting it out. It’s one of the rules for breaking bad news to kids; unless it’s time sensitive, or utterly urgent, Xmas and birthdays are off limits. “Hey, grampa’s had a heart attack we need to go say goodbye” is acceptable. “Hey, I’ve known this for months and could have picked any other day to break it to you, but me and your dad are getting a divorce because he wants to marry his mistress happy birthday here’s your cake” (this actually happened to one of my friends) is not. Andi has had months to broach this, and has unlimited time to do so after this day. She really needed to let Amanda have this and hang on to it, even if it was only for another 48 hours.
While I agree that this is not the time for Andi to bring it up, Andi did not bring it up. Amanda did.
Andi’s mistake was trying to do the phone call, and letting Amanda know she was stepping out for a minute. If she hadn’t made such a big deal of “be good, okay?”, Amanda would probably not have even noticed Andi was gone. She could’ve told Mari that she wanted to step out for a moment, and to please reassure Amanda if Amanda noticed Andi was missing (too many girls to use pronouns, sorry).
But once that mistake was made, it was inevitable that Amanda would snoop. Which made her overhearing inevitable. Amanda is the one who asked if grandma lied about her death. Compounding one lie with another is not going to help the situation.
So, completely out of context, telling Amanda a horrible secret on Christmas is horrible. But IN context, Amanda asked a question about a horrible secret and deserves to know the truth, regardless of which day it happens to be.
Wow. Deep. I wonder what’s next… explosion, emotions, anger…?
[Kosh]… YES…{/Kosh]
I think this is a great time for this to come out. Neither Amanda or Andi is alone. Amanda is surrounded by a family who has shown that they love her, when/if this hits her very hard, she’ll have other arms to run to for safety and comfort while she processes it. Even Selkie will be there for her.
^^^ this.
Amanda is, right now, with the family that DOES love her, the family that never wanted to give her up, the family that thought she was dead. She’s not stuck with Andi, this person who has given her up once is not her only lifeline. She can literally just run to her -loving- grandma to cry. She has her family, no matter what she thinks of Andi. She’s on solid ground now, and this is not a crack opening under her feet, because she’s not in Andi’s house completely dependent on her now.
This is good timing.
Yes. Sometimes people run away from everything because they can’t process, but at this point it’s unlikely she will run from all of this — more likely she will run toward, and that will help her get through it.
Bad timing definetly, but to be fair, Amanda brought up the topic first by asking Andi if her mother lied about her (Amandas) “death”. (Doesn’t mean I blame Amanda, of course!)
Andis reaction to spill the beans, however bad timed it might be, is quite understandable. She just went through a rough evening at the Smith’s place and a very emotional conversation with her mother, and now got (inadvertently) confronted with her worst mistake by her own daughter again. I guess she just couldn’t bear to withhold the truth to Amanda any longer.
Kid’s timing… When a kid is ready to know something, is the right time to tell the kid about something. And you know its that time basically when they ask leading questions, probably either through the bathroom door or when you are negotiating with the landlord on the doorstep. So, I figure Andi would have been wrong to say, “No, Amanda, no your Grandmother, it was Someone Else” because then Amanda would rightfully feel that Andi turned that Someone Else into a lie by omission.
Oh boy. This is gonna get messy.
Amanda is not going to take this pill well, at all. But good job for an honest answer from Andi. Delaying or attempting to detour the answer would have made things so much worse.
Gerdduhmnit, Dave!
“Lego.” No S on the end.
*waves arms around frantically*
ok, so the timing sucks. but this particular basket of dirty laundry needed to get aired for a while now….besides, its no *real* family christmas without at least one screaming match and/or emotional breakdown. thats life!
Dave, you seem to be awfully good at showcasing the complexities of relationships. I wonder why.
I do have confidence, however, that under your care Amanda will come out OK. Thanks for a sensitive (and entertaining) comic about real life.
“Real life.”
I mean no offense, but I can’t help but laugh at that. I mean, Dave’s writing certainly has a lot of emotional depth to it that provides an excellent story. I just have to express my amusement at a world with fresh water mer-people living in one of the Great Lakes of North America being called “real life.”
Long Live the Good Feels! Just… throwing that battle cry out there. Holiday needed it. I think it’s about time Andi did it and that’s all I shall say there.
Dave> may you build to your heart’s desire:) Happy Food Coma Day!
Oh wow, I was totally expecting no update today. Excellent work, Dave! 🙂
And such an exciting conclusion to a long week. I can’t wait to see how poor Amanda reacts to Andi confessing that lie. I can only hope that it flows safely. Amanda’s been pretty high strung meeting her father’s family, I am predicting that regardless of her energy right now, this hit is going to drain her to a point where the best she can do is sit and listen and think about it–and probably cry a lot–to a point where she’s OK after regaining her senses.
It probably has no hope of working out that easily, and her prior foster family probably has Amanda better prepared for emotional bombs like this than I feel comfortable thinking about. Not a good prepared, mind, just ready to take on the world alone again even though she doesn’t have to.
Yes! Well done Andi, I’m glad to see her acting like an adult here. She could have easily lied, either directly or indirectly, even going with splitting the blame saying they both did. So happy to see her owning up to the mistake fully and admitting that the final decision here was her call.
I don’t see how this is “selfish” of Andi. She knows this is going to blow up in her face, and she KNOWS this is going to make Amanda mad at her, at BEST. Yet she’s telling her the truth, rather than dodging the question or shifting the blame onto someone else.
This will only make HER look bad, so how is that being selfish? If anything, she’s being remarkably mature by owning up to her mistake, TO the person who she hurt the most.
I’m thinking that Amanda’s next question is going to be “Why?”
I want to hear Andi’s answer.
Yeah, Andi, was it Pat not wanting you to loose your focus on her?
Was it Pat not wanting you to repeat what she thought was a mistake, like she’d done?
Was it you, scared to loose your focus on Todd?
Was it the baby scaring Pat, because her own mother died in childbirth?
C’mon! Give us the scoop, Kid. I owe it to Myles, to find out. He was my partner, and when you are a detective, … Well I kinda owe it to my partner to find out this kinda thing. But first I gotta find your missing father for you, and to do that, I gotta find out why you gave up your baby! Why’d ya’ do it, Kid?
Welp. This won’t be pretty. Amanda’s going to feel betrayed and angry. She might hit Andi.
It’s not that she doesn’t love you. It’s that she’s a horrible manipulative abusive excuse for a human being and she doesn’t love you.
Rarely have I wished more for the ability to “like” someone’s comment than I am right now.
All the bad things Andi may have done still doesn’t negate this vital truth.
This is so complicated…but I am hoping it works for the best. Terrible timing, but Amanda deserves honesty—especially given the number of people in her family it’s impacting. Hopefully she is strong enough to take this news and her family helps her heal from it—including Andi.
On a different note, here is a beautiful real-life adoption story of an older child: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-adoption-thanksgiving-20161124-story.html
The video is a joy to watch!
Hey Dave, this is bugging me, how did Amanda not know that Andi was the one who lied about her being dead? In Selkie 710, Todd and Andi have this conversation with Amanda listening in:
T: Doesn’t matter. She never would have gone through it at ALL if you’d kept her.
A:You think I don’t know that? I-I know I was wrong.
Combining that with her hearing Patricia say “I bought that vile urn FOR YOU,” I’m kind of surprised she didn’t realize Andi was involved in the death lie.
She’s eight. Very bright, but she’s still not going to catch all the implications of adult conversations.