Sunday
My folks left this morning after a wonderful buffet breakfast, and 6 hours later have already texted that they made it home. We had a blast catching up last night, looking at pictures of the ski trip and filling each other in on stories of the past week.
I could tell my mom was ready to go home though. She’s a homebody and time together stresses her out as much as it does me. An interesting dynamic happened toward the end. After deciding that I would be vulnerable and honest with her on a number of topics, including parenting and being a mom, it felt like there was less of a struggle on my end. I felt more confident (or just cared less) and was able to be much more cheerful with her, and forgiving of the minor moments where I felt my parenting under critique (“Are you sure you want to let them watch more TV?”).
Although we had our moments, overall this visit with her went better than weeks like this have in the past.
I can see that I have a long way to go before the relationship is where I’d like it to be, but I know that goal is much more attainable without the alcohol.
Gratitude postscript
Feeling very grateful to have C home, out shopping for dinner and texting me things like “do we have cocktail sauce?” (shrimp appetizer in our future, yummm!). Say what I might about our relationship, we really do have a good thing going.