I am gearing up for a busy seven days, and they’re going to be rather split-second in terms of timing. And somewhat schizophrenic in nature.
Today is easy. I'm about to spend some private time with a friend, and then I’m doing dinner and silliness and kinkiness with a group of my pals. But soon, who should arrive but - my dearest mamma. Which is all well and good, except that I’ll have to do a quick reversal of role.
You seem, my mother is a sweet, gentle woman who loves me very much. She would never raise her voice or argue with anyone. She wants nothing except that the people she loves be happy.
Occasionally, though, my mother gets ideas about what, exactly, would make someone happy. And once she’s decided that - oh, you better just get out of the way. Because she is a five-foot, one-hundred-pound force of nature with a southern accent, and she is simply not going to stop until she has brought about whatever set of circumstances she just knows will be best for her loved one.
I have developed a sort of emotional Aikido for dealing with my mother when she’s on one of her campaigns. You know - don't hurt her, just redirect her momentum. But I pick my battles. Whatever it is, unless you're highly skilled and really invested in not doing it, you should just choose to go along and be made happy by it. Believe me, it’s much simpler if you don’t struggle.
Fortunately, I think she exhausted a lot of her making-people-happy-whether-they-like-it-or-not mojo on my brother’s wedding in May, and besides, now she has a whole new set of people (my sister-in-law’s family) to interest herself in.
Just to make these few days even more fraught with the possibility of comic mishaps, my partner and I also have Midori staying with us. We love her, and she is the best and easiest house guest imaginable. She travels so much so has it down to a science, and she has a knack of flowing into a busy house so smoothly that you hardly now she’s there.
She often stays with us when she’s in town. In fact, my mother and her husband have met Midori at our house before. So when I told my mother Midori would also be here, she replied, “Oh, yes, your friend from San Francisco! She’s so nice, and so pretty. Tell me again, what does she do for a living?”
“Um…she’s an artist. Yeah. An artist. So, is there anything particular you’d like to do while you in Seattle, Mom?”
It used to be that this sort of worlds-colliding would have been flatly impossible for me to manage. But I’ve gotten more relaxed lately about people from my various worlds encountering each other. Still, some things challenge even my ability to keep a lot of balls in the air. Keep your fingers crossed I don’t send them all flying in the wrong directions.
