Day Two of “Grandma Invasion!”

As usual with my mom’s visits, its been a whirlwind of activity but also incredibly relaxing and rejuvenating. I do realize that I’m very blessed to not only still have a living mother at my age (my grandmother died when my mom was 25) but such spark-plug of one. Of course, we’ve butted heads over the years, but we have always had a good and even fun relationship. As I put it to many friends... My family put the “fun” in dysFUNctional.

This visit is no exception to that truth.

For example... How we joke around with my son. Unlike my daughter, my son as a baby wanted nothing to do with my mother (or anyone, including his father many times). Mom would hold out her arms to my daughter and she’d reach out for Grandma. My son, he’d bury his face in my neck until my mother stopped indicating she wanted to hold him... Or even TALK to him in the beginning.

Over the last 8 and half years, he’s slowly come around. As I type, they are both working side by side on a puzzle together. But there is always a line. Mom gets a kick out of finding out where it currently is every time we get together. She’ll discover it and grin at me. Its just this thing we do... Kids have no idea. So anyway, Friday night she says... “I’m thinking this trip I’m going to sleep with each of you.” (She’s always had this thing of not sleeping the guest room but with my daughter who has a queen size bed.) She has no intention of doing it but this is where she is thinking my son’s “line” is now.

My son responds with that his bed is only a twin size so it might be too crowded. Mom says... “Oh that’s ok, I don’t need much room at all. We can snuggle just great!” He warns her that he kicks a lot too so she might not be comfortable. To which she tells him it won’t bother her at all. He just nods with a “look” while I suppress a smile.

A bit later, my mom exclaims she’s exhausted and better get up off the sofa and go put on her jammies now before she’s too tired. Then she adds, “Somehow I don’t think [insert son’s name] is gonna want to sleep with me nekkid!” We all burst out laughing and I tease my son... “Sleeping with a nekkid old lady... Whadda ya think?” My mother and I find the mental image hilarious so we laugh even harder. Its clear we are joking but given he is only 8 years old we quickly state that’s the fact.

But a bedtime he must have still had concern as he needed Grandma to understand he’s too tired to snuggle and he’s got his “big game” next day. I know its terrible, but it makes me laugh so hard. (I did tell him its sweet he’s trying hard not to hurt Grandma’s feelings but we were really teasing him. His bed is too small and we know he’s not wanting to sleep with Grandma.)

Then there is always that moment of... “Who is this woman?!? She’d never tell me something like that when I was a kid!” This trip, it happened at my son’s baseball game. We’re ALL kinda bored as a bunch of 8 year olds playing baseball isn’t exactly exciting. My mother suggests a game we played as kids... She’ll name a letter of the alphabet and we all have to quickly name a word that isn’t a proper name, animal or fruit within 10 seconds.

After they were done playing that, she confides in my daughter that this is a variation of this game to play when you are stuck listening to a long-winded ad boring speaker. You pick a letter and listen for them to use 5 words that start with that. She tells her, you’d be surprised how it passes the time. And, you can honestly tell the speaker you listened to “every word they said.”

Oy.

I said to my mom, you do realize the only “speeches” my daughter hears is pretty much only from her teachers... and parents? This advice is coming from the Queen of Lectures of my childhood. And God forbid she caught us tuning her out! Now if I had known BACK THEN this little trick...

Great.

But seriously, it is so nice having my mom around. And not just because she has now managed to re-arrange and/or organize my daughter’s bedroom, kids’ bathroom, my home office and my kitchen counters thus far. But she makes growing older seem like such an adventure rather than scary. Sure, now that she’s 60, we’ve had way too many discussions about her health than ever before. And I have her to thank for passing down the oily skin gene which has resulted in people always thinking we’re younger than we actually are. (I.e. Our wrinkling is very minimal and slow coming).

Its her overall fun outlook that I am so grateful for inheriting and seeing it doesn’t go away with old age is most re-assuring. Last night, after dinner... She decided to try my son’s razor scooter. We walked/scootered over to the local ice-cream shop (10 minute walk). She yelped... Fell off several times... And laughed.

May I have many more years of hearing her laughter... I can't bear imagining it disappearing.