Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time

It’s been an hour since we got home from picking my mother from the airport and already my mom is tinkering around my apartment, moving things around, fiddling with my belongings. Usually, this would cause me great stress and be the starting point of many arguments this holiday season. This time it only makes me smile.

No, I haven’t suffered a head injury. I am merely pleased that this behavior in completely in line with the behavior my mother is normally displaying. However, a year ago Christmas, this was not the case. Something was wrong, I just didn’t know what, when after a week of visit, she had not argued with me once, she hadn’t criticized my parenting nor had she attempted to rearrange my furniture or belongings.

Long story short, turned out she was very sick. Life threateningly so. She had been ignoring the signs of serious illness for so long that it was a miracle she hadn’t died already. If it hadn’t been for my noticing that something was “off” about her behavior when she visited me, it was unlikely that my aunt would have forced her to see a doctor upon her return, especially since she had been fooling everyone else back home for months.

She couldn’t fool me.  The only consistent thing about my relationship with my mother is how we won’t ever see eye to eye about a lot of things. Mainly stemming from the fact that she has never understood me and still to this day treats me like I am a child, incapable of raising myself, much less raising the lives of my children. I have long since resigned myself to the lack of understanding between us.

Therefore, usually she drives me up the wall, her actions like a splinter under my skin. Not this time. I am grateful for a return to the usual flow and would instead be concerned if something had been altered in her personality to the point where we no longer argued about things. So am I perturbed that she is once again fussing at me? Not so much.

This time it only makes me smile. Merry Christmas everybody.