Drama

I've been trying to come up with a brilliant Show & Tell post, but to tell the truth - I've got nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. So, instead I'm going to give in to a small Facebook rant that's been building in my head for the last week.

First, though, I have to explain the back story. Everyone in C's family lives within a short drive of each other, except for us. We live five hours away. C's sister (let's call her A) was never been particularly close to C or to their parents, until she had a baby a year and a half ago. Now C's parents watch the baby a lot, and they have grown very close to A. (Which is to be expected, and a great thing in my opinion. C's parents were always heartbroken that A had chosen to distance herself from the family.) A and C's parents are aware of our situation, but they don't really try to understand what we're going through. C's family is very stoic; their behavior remains steady and unchanged, regardless of the circumstances that surround them. Reactionary emotions are strictly taboo. (They love me, can you imagine?)

C called A around Christmas, and she never returned the call. This is par for the course, in their relationship. Had she made the effort, though, I'm sure they would have discussed that the baby's first birthday was coming up, and that since we were going through a rough patch in our own quest to have a baby, we would not be doing anything special. (After all, a one-year-old isn't going to remember who did and did not send her a card...) But, A never called back.

Two months later, we received a box from C's mom. Neither of us noticed that the box was addressed to him alone. (In the past, she has addressed everything to both of us.) Inside, we found a framed picture of the baby and a note. Basically C's mom wrote that we need to make more of an effort to keep up with the baby's milestones and growth.

I was really angry - and to my surprise, so was C. His family doesn't keep up with the milestones in our IF journey, or our lives in general. And A can't even be bothered to return a phone call. If A wanted us to have a picture of the baby and sent it herself, fine. But there was something rather twisted about C's mom doing it (not to mention the note). C discussed it with her, and I sent her a (nice) email explaining how I felt about it. My email went unanswered. C eventually asked his mom whether she had received it; she said she understood where I was coming from and "we're all family; we have to stick together." (I still have no clue what that was supposed to mean.)

So now the point of this whole post...when I joined Facebook, I remembered that C's mom had mentioned several times that she and A both had profiles, and that she wished we would join. I sent them each a friend request, more to keep the peace than anything else. I thought they would be offended if I didn't. C's mom accepted immediately, and it's been a good thing in our relationship. A just accepted last week, a full three months after I sent it. She has a new job, and I wanted to write a "congrats" note on her wall...when I clicked over, though, I saw that she's accepted other friend requests in the last three months, just not mine.

I've gone from thinking that A is just a sporadic communicator (like my own sister - she doesn't call or write for months, but then we pick up right where we left off) to wondering whether we've offended her in some way. I guess I look at relationships as two-way streets. We've made efforts to reach out to A, but she never reaches back. What more are we supposed to do???