Relative obscurity

There is something to be said for being an orphan.

The phone just rang.

ME (checking caller ID and wondering why she is calling at 10:15 pm): Hello? What's wrong?
MOM: Didn't you pick up the phone when your sister called?
ME: Um, I didn't know she called. The kids have been on the phone.
MOM: Well, she did. You reallly should call her. We just got off the phone.
ME (tense and tired): I'll call her tomorrow. What's up?
MOM: Well, the baby was born early. It wasn't due until November.
ME: ...
MOM: The shower isn't until next week but of course, they will have to cancel it now. I just put a check in the mail, I kind of wish I had waited to mail it now. ....
ME: ...
MOM: We don't even know if it will make it. If it does, it will have a lot of problems. She should have had an amniocentisis.
ME: ... Umm, Ma?
MOM: Yeah?
ME: What baby?
MOM: Sean's baby (Sean being my nephew in CA. Last time I saw him was in 1992. He was about 4).
ME: Sean is married?
MOM: No, they were going to get married in February, after the baby was born. Now, who knows if they will even get married.
ME (becoming painfully aware of how out of the loop I am): So Sean has a girlfriend ... and she was going to have a baby in November. Umm, Ma? (she makes me say 'um' a lot) Why didn't I know anything about this?
MOM: I told you about that!
ME: Umm, no, I had no idea Sean even had a girlfriend. You haven't talked about him in months (which is what happens when her children/grandchildren disappoint ... it's as though they don't exist).
MOM: I have too! He was at the wedding this summer, that was when I found out. (the wedding being the infamous Kelliot wedding, where she has many pictured of her and "all her grandkids". No my kids weren't there.)
ME: Umm, I wasn't at the wedding. This is news to me.
MOM: I know you weren't but I told you when I came home.
ME: (realizing she probably had the conversation with one of my kids, not me) I have NO IDEA what you are talking about mom.

(she then proceeds to tell me, in gory detail, everything she has, supposedly, already told me and details about the major health problems the baby will have and how it's too bad they didn't know she was going to be born deformed or they could have had an abortion but maybe it will work out that the baby doesn't survive and is it just me or did she just say she wants her great-grandchild to die??)

By this time, I'm disgusted and angry. For one, I teach kids that are born like that. I know they are not hopeless and I certainly don't think they should have been aborted.