Rebekah

Introduction

Rebekah with Joel (Samantha's dad / Livia's husband) in the renovated kitchen at Mubbie's house

It has belatedly occurred to me that this site has long neglected one of the key members of our extended family – Rebekah Wade, Livia's mom, affectionately referred to as my "mother-out-law"; also known as RBW and R_x.

A Brief History

When Livia and I initially decided to move to Athens to help Livia's ailing grandmother (Rebekah's mother), Mubbie, in the fall of 1991, it was Rebekah who offered to help out with our moving bills. For reasons best explained elsewhere* (read my lips: no new jobs), I was very leery of taking on the expense of moving without having a job already secured. Rebekah offered to help with the expense, and I was ultimately convinced to go through with it. Once we got there, Rebekah helped pay off the moving truck ($200, I think) but sadly could not offer any further assistance. Our credit-card debt immediately began to escalate.

In spite of this somewhat rocky beginning, Rebekah always did her best to offer helpful advice to Livia, especially in cases where R felt I might need a gentle nudge in a better direction. She generally declined to speak to me directly about these matters, fearing (perhaps rightly) that I might be able to rationally justify my actions and thus evade her corrective tendencies – which were (of course) only intended for the best.

While I no longer get to see Rebekah when she visits Athens for holidays (since I don't live there anymore), I do get to see her a few times a year when Anna is in town. Our interactions are almost always very pleasant, and leave me with no reason to think that there is any hard feeling left over from the friction we both endured while I was living in Athens.

Letters

A brief chronicle of our correspondence; this doesn't fairly represent her point-of-view, I'm sure, as I haven't yet located any of the replies she may have sent, not to mention the original letters to which I was responding in some cases. I'll post them as soon as I can find them.

• 1993-10-28 Woozle writes to Rebekah
• 1994-01-01 Woozle writes to Rebekah
• 1994-01-11 Woozle writes to Rebekah
• 1994-09-06 Woozle writes Rebekah
• 1994-09-16 Woozle writes Rebekah
• 1997-01-27 Woozle writes to Rebekah

Footnote

*My contract at Duke had just concluded and I was reeling under the weight of unplanned expenses from a job-related trip shortly before that, so I was extremely reluctant to leave Durham, where I had job contacts and where there was a lot of computer activity – especially right in the middle of a huge recession. It turned out after we moved there that The University of Georgia, which would have been my most likely prospect for quick employment, had instituted a hiring-freeze... so there simply were no new jobs for programmers.

Bekkalog

2006-08-04 21:21

Apparently there's been some misunderstanding about when Anna was needed down in Athens, and apparently Rebekah very badly wanted to drive Anna down herself, today.

I had been told some time ago that Anna was needed in Athens on August 6, and I agreed to drive her down on August 5 (August 4 being a Friday, on which we usually do a lot of errands, so it would not have been convenient and I'm sure I said so in whatever conversations there were in which we worked this out). I posted this on the calendar on June 21 at about 4pm, as can be seen in the history. Email from Livia on June 21 confirms this understanding: "Joel's confirmed Aug. 6-11 for springs in FL with Brenna (and her mom). Can you be prepared to bring Anna either that Friday or Saturday depending on her energy level?"

Next, on Thursday (the day after Rebekah had planned to pick up Anna for a lunch, so we left Anna out of our lunch plans, but then Rebekah canceled so that Anna had to fend for herself as we had already eaten) when Rebekah came by to pick up Anna for Part 2 of the summer's travels (i.e. the trip to California), I mentioned taking Anna to Athens; Rebekah did not object. (Sandy was present for this conversation, and confirms my recollection.)

Finally, this morning when we picked up Anna from Rebekah's house (they having both returned from California late the previous night), we confirmed again that we would be taking Anna to Athens. Rebekah offered to take her down, should we change our minds, but did not object to our doing it. (Sandy was also present for this conversation.)

Then this evening we get a call from Livia, who apparently thought we were on our way, but seemed perfectly okay with my explanation that we were coming down tomorrow. A few minutes later, Rebekah calls and talks to Anna, and tells her that she is "very disappointed", presumably that we did not drive down today. Livia calls and talks to Anna a few minutes later and tries to convince her to go down with Rebekah, who is apparently terribly hurt by the situation (it's not clear how); it's also not clear whether there has been a misunderstanding about the dates, though Anna gets the impression that she was "supposed to be there today".

The above should set the record straight. We worked out back in June that we were going down tomorrow, and nobody gave us the slightest reason, until earlier this evening, to think that the plan had changed.

--Woozle 21:50, 4 August 2006 (EDT)