Gosh, I don’t even know where to begin with this one.  I got a call today from our neighbor’s mother.  She began the conversation by saying that they feel we haven’t shown her daughter the proper respect.  I took this moment to bask in my speechlessness, while she continued on to say that 1) we cannot control our baby, 2) Rob slammed the door in her daughter’s face the other day when she came up to complain about said “out-of-control” baby, 3) we constantly move our furniture around at night and play loud music, 4) we neglect our son and let him cry for hours without attending to him.  Let’s just allow these accusations to sink in a moment.  The last one especially.  She is accusing us of neglecting our son.  These are dangerous allegations to make, and if you think I resented hearing them, and felt sick at the stomach that someone would even say such a thing, you are right.

I finally caught my breath and asked this woman calmly what she suggest we do about the “crying,” “laughing,” “squealing,” and “loud crawling.”  She said that she wasn’t sure because it wasn’t her child.  I replied “Exactly, he’s not your child.  He’s ours.  And we are doing the best that we possibly can with him.  I understand that it is inconvenient to wake up to a crying baby, but we are doing the best we can.  We have our house on the market.  We will be moving soon.  We are doing everything we can.”  On the inside I wanted to tell her she was a horrible pushover who was allowing her spoiled 34-year-old daughter to lie to her and be a complete pain in the ass to everyone around her.  But I restrained myself.  It was very, very hard.  Her end of the conversation started out very defensively, but I was able to slowly disarm her by saying I understood the disadvantages of living beneath a baby, and from there, I was slowly able to introduce her to the idea that living above her daughter hasn’t been a pleasant experience either.  When I conceded that leaving beneath a baby could be disruptive, I told her I knew this because I could hear them mocking Holden through the floor.  She laughed nervously at this.  When she brought up the fact that her daughter felt like we were “tattling” on her to her parents instead of directly addressing these issues with her, I raised the point that going directly to her with a problem is pointless when the music is so loud that she doesn’t hear us knocking at the door.  Again, nervous laughter.  

I said to her mother, “Let me illustrate a scenario for you.  This morning Holden woke up at 5:45 AM.  Your daughter was angry and frustrated at also being woken up at this hour, and understandably so.  She retaliated by blasting music for an hour.”  Her mother responds “That’s exactly what happened.  She needs to handle this situation with more maturity.”  Aha.  So what started out as a defensive tone where Rob and I are these horrible furniture-moving, baby-neglecting monsters, has somehow morphed into a more reasonable stance where her daughter needs to accept some responsibility and start acting like a grown-up.  Now we’re getting somewhere.  I told her I would go downstairs to speak with her daughter, because I don’t want stress or bad blood.  But I also said that I cannot control my baby.  It’s not possible, and it’s not fair.  It’s already not fair that I wince whenever he vocalizes because I am afraid of what repercussions we may face as a result.  At any rate, I asked her mother whether she thought her daughter would be receptive to a sit-down.  She said, “I don’t know, she’s pretty angry….”  Sheesh.  

One of the questions that her mother asked me was whether we would treat her daughter with more respect if she was the owner of that unit, rather than a renter.  I told her that was irrelevant, but what I really wanted to ask her in response was whether her daughter  would exhibit less of a sense of entitlement if her parents weren’t the owners.  

In the end, the conversation concluded amicably, although it accomplished nothing.  It made me realize that our downstairs neighbor is who she is, in large part, because her parents have supported her emotionally and financially through all of her bullshit.  Her mother seemed to be half supporting her daughter and half embarrassed at even having the conversation in the first place; she kept saying, “I do know and remember what it was like to have babies…”  almost as a disclaimer for the outrageous things she was asking of us.  I keep thinking to myself that she is a woman in her 50s, whose legacy is a daughter who cannot interface reasonably with the world around her.  Her legacy is a daughter who concocts hurtful things about those around her solely so she can get her way.  I think about this legacy and I am glad I kept my cool, because this woman deserves my pity more than my hate.