The Mom leaves today. It’s been an absolutely lovely visit and I’m sad to see her go.
I am sad that I won't have her here for the everyday and the exciting. I’m depressed that she won't be here to share bizzare experiences shopping as we end up in weird exchanges with the folks that work at the stores. That we won’t be able to have the type conversations we’ve had that we start on one day and finish the next. In the almost three weeks she’s been here, we’ve solved the world’s problems and uncovered a few random oddities about people, places and things. Conversations with Mom have always been like that – educational, arbitrary and totally not at all what other people seem to discuss at dinner or the grocery store or wherever. One day we discussed how Gentian Violet was used to ‘cure’ sexually transmitted diseases. The next we revisited my childhood trauma with the Aunties trying to burn my brief contact with a possible leper off my hands. At a party for our friend's two-year-old twins, she attempted to explain the reason the Maasai drink blood with a curious ten-year-old while I looked on in slight horror and amusement. A topic, by the way, I’d brought up while sharing a memory from when I was a child of watching my father share a cup of blood from a cow with a Maasai elder. And while she did verify my lion story - the lion that got into our school yard and chased the poor guy around the field as we stood in the window screaming until his shoe fell off, the lion stopped to eat it and the guy got away - she disputed several others I tried to tell over the course of her stay “You’re making that up, ej.” with a matter of fact tone and a laugh she’d say. Mother Nature has cooperated and put on quite a show for her. We’ve had countless Owl sightings and wild bird sightings and deer and raccoon and rabbit and on and on. I’ve enjoyed watching her watch them from our windows, binoculars to face, for hours. The baby Owls trying to catch chipmunks or a rabbits have fascinated her as equally as the deer trying to eat seed out of the bird feeder. She, who has no TV, has also been transfixed by the wonders of Myth Busters and How It’s Made and House Hunters. It’s been more entertaining to watch her watch the shows, as she’s giving her opinion of the facts they pretended, pointing out the truths and the suppositions. We’ve spent time in the library, which resulted in time on the couch "reading", which led to the most wonderful naps and to Husband referring to us as corpses in coffins. He can subtly dig at our indulgence all he wants; napping with Mom has been my favorite part. Lying on our separate couches, tucked into blankets while reading, slowly dropping off into dreamland, waking up to chat about this or that, the big window filled with green treetops and colorful feathers… It has been heaven. But Mom leaves today. And it’s time for her to go. I have managed to temper my snippy responses, couching them in a laugh or a silly phrase but I know that she’s getting sick of my mothering. She’s had enough of my babying her down steps or while walking or when I explain things to her. She’s done with my cussing and my stories of how awesome and how right I am. She’s had enough of us dragging her out to hear music that is “too nasal...” And “sounds all the same…” She’s done listening to my snarky comments to Husband and his snarky comments back. She has had it with me. She’s ready to go home. I am ready for her to go home too. But I am not ready for her not to be here.
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AuthorMy name is ej. I'm a girl. I say that because with the short hair and the short initials, folks aren't always sure. More brilliant insights to who I am in About me Archives
April 2019
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