Interesting takes on relationships

My sister and I shared our worries about last weekend ahead of time. Both had to do with our mom, but interestingly, were pretty different.

My sister worried about my mom's comments like, "Oh, I know I'll want to eat a lot at dinner tonight, so I'll just have a salad for lunch." or "I'll just have a light breakfast so I can have a pastry for lunch." I remember once when she asked me how many pieces of bacon I'd had. I wouldn't tell her. It felt like she was checking up on me. She insisted that she just wanted to be fair--she didn't want to take the last piece of bacon if someone else hadn't had their fair share. Just eat the freaking bacon, Mom.

Anyway, that hadn't come up for me this visit. What I was worried about was when she would see G do something questionable and would lean in to me and hiss, "You have got to control your child!" or something awful. As if he is programmable or something. So I practiced saying, "I am responsible for myself and my child. You just have to trust that I am responsible for him."

It was OK. Mom did make a comment about eating but I don't think Maura was around. G behaved pretty darn well (except for the last day when he wanted to make the kids' beds and just couldn't control himself well enough and ended up throwing his shoes at me, and--surprise!--didn't get to make the kids' beds).

Interesting how we can come at things from such different directions.