I have decided to keep Thanksgiving small and focus the family holiday dinner towards Christmas. That’s when my mother told me that she wouldn’t be able to make Christmas dinner. “But I want to see the family together for a holiday dinner.”
After deliberating with Lrudlrick, I called her back today. I told her to come over for the holiday dinner. A lengthy q/a session that could rival Abbott and Costello’s Whose on first routine , in insanity not in hilarity, resulted in a tentative holiday dinner at my house or was it her house?
Truth be told, our conversations can be used as torture devices. CTU, should try this tactic. Instead of nerve debilitating serums, try endless loops of my conversations with my mother. I guarantee they will work faster. The only side effect is possible nausea, nose bleeds and aneurysms.
I never understood my mother’s need for secrecy in everything. “We’re going to go buy stamps but don’t tell anyone.” “I’m going to the supermarket but don’t tell anyone.”
Firstly, who the hell am I going to tell? Secondly, who cares if you are going to the supermarket? Unless you found a supermarket selling turkey breasts cheaper than $3.50/lb then you have no reason to be secretive about grocery shopping.
Didn’t I tell you folks that dinners and get-togethers with my mother are not easy? See why I had to think about Thanksgiving in early October? Even when I decided on just keeping it to our annual Christmas dinner at my place, plans changed.
Now all plans have been scratched and my mother has become so sedentary that the idea of coming to my house for a holiday dinner, she wanted in the first place, has become this ball of confusion. I thought she’d be happy if I said that I’d make the entire meal at my house and drive the bloody meal to her house along with my trimmed tree, bag of presents and eggnog.
But now I think she has something against me preparing the holiday get-together. She's skipped out on our holiday get-togethers several times already. Now she wants it but she doesn't want me to do it yet she doesn't want to do the work either.
Lrudlrick may be right. Between my marriage and my brother’s relationship, she may be suffering from empty nest syndrome. The idea of coming to my house and seeing how I have a ‘new’ life outside of her realm probably upsets her.
Perhaps seeing me as a fully functioning adult, with my own home, upsets her. I don’t see how though. I was never attached to my mother. We had a love-hate relationship. She always felt I was like her mother and I always felt like she wanted to be my sister rather than my mother.
At the age of 9 I was doing my own laundry. I had after school functions that kept me busy until the wee hours when I’d go home, eat dinner with my grandparents and then do my homework. By my 20's I was living away from home.
However, implausible it is in my mind, I suppose I am a reason why she may have empty nest syndrome.
But it’s been two years of this. When will depression leave her?
