Today I had lunch with my mother in the strangest place in the universe: a place where mobile phones and devices connected to the Internet didn’t work. We had to talk to each other and have a conversation. I felt like I was in southern Minnesota or 1996. It was my turn on several ‘with friends’ games and there was probably a great deal of work that needed responding to but it was nice to eat a meal without looking at my phone.
It took the entire soup course for mom to accept the fact that her phone wasn’t going to there to entertain her. I don’t know how she gets up in the morning, honestly. If I were my mother I’d throw myself in the river. I felt bad for her because I don’t want to take my meals with me, either. It’s dreadful.
I was even polite when she turned to her favorite conversation topic: people in her family who have disowned me. She doesn’t accept this and tragically beats us over the head with the other in an attempt to elicit a response. This time I was polite about it and was proud of myself for it. For Lent I gave up being angry with her for this behavior of hers. If I exercised poor judgment and procreated and my parents disowned my child and my siblings intimated to said progeny that they should have been aborted I might not be ‘okay’ with it either. She wants me to reconcile with them and I’d like her to reconcile with the fact that you can reconcile with tacky but you can’t reconcile with the vulgar or irrational.
I had the raspberry cheesecake for dessert because if I listened to her drone on about her parents without heckling even once I shouldn’t push my luck. If there is a fork or spoon to stuff in my mouth when I wanted to say something caustic I can prevent it from passing my teeth. I’ve passed my own test. I can endure my mother’s prattle about her relatives without hurting her feelings. I feel grown up, which is oddly tragic.
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