Sunday afternoon

I'm sitting on the couch, minding my own business, immersed in my crossword, when my mother asks me for the twelfth time whether I want to go for a walk. For the twelfth time I respond, "first of all, I don't care. Pick somewhere and we'll go." But then I decide I don't want to go. I'm burnt out, I've been fighting a cold for a month, and I want to sit on my @$$ on a Sunday afternoon, I'm entitled to do so. At first she agrees, but three questions later, she grabs my crossword out of my hand and orders me to get up and get ready to go. I think, well why not, it looks nice out, and comply, against my better judgment.

We're on our way out, when my mother notices the fruit basket.

Mom: Didn't you see that we have bananas.
A.: I did.
Mom: Bananas have potassium, they have...

It's just now, this morning, occurred to me that I am truly going to have to listen to nutritional lectures ALL WEEK. Take the conversation this morning,

Mom: Do you saute tomatoes when you make omelets?
A.: I don't, generally.
Mom: Well, that vitamin in tomatoes is best absorbed when consumed with fat...


For those of you prone to easy solutions, I don't pander. I'm not going to say 'yes, I do that,' nor will I eat everything she suggests just to get her off my back.

Anyway, we go for our walk, and the cold I've been fighting gains ground. Spare me the lecture, those of you who would argue that cold weather doesn't cause illness. Enough of it does temporarily weaken your immune system and make you more sensitive. But I don't think it was the weather... it was the activity, when my body had been telling me to rest.

The reason I'm telling you all this is that I did not fail to try to pin my condition on my mother, since she was the one who got me to go on the walk. In response, I got a lecture on how fresh air is the best remedy, etc., and then started telling me about how good for you physical activity is (really? I never would have thought). It's like all-or-nothing with my parents-- neither of them seems to understand moderation or appropriate timing. If I say I don't want to go for a walk now, it's interpreted as though I've never been for a walk in my life, nor will ever go, and treated accordingly, with a lecture on the benefits of physical activity.

***

With said cold, I get tired early and decide to go to bed, but first I need to make my bed. I'd mentioned on our walk, as we were navigating around goose droppings, that I'd considered getting a down comforter, which led me to ask myself whether I had issues with down, and decided, with some guidance (from one of the readers of this blog), that I didn't, because goose were mean and one of them attacked me once. I'm not sure how well that works, considering that mink are mean, too, but I'd still never wear their fur... but I still think I could sleep under a down comforter with a semi-clean conscience. My mother mentioned that she had one she wasn't using, and that I could try it out this week, which was wonderful news.

So I started making the bed, my mom comes up to help, and starts searching for the comforter in the depths of the closet. As I'm trying to fit another blanket into a comforter sheet, she keeps tossing things on top of it. Not blindly-- she leaves the closet, turns around, and throws pillows and other stuff on top of the bed. I ask her to stop. Finally, she finds the down comforter, which smells incredibly moldy. I suggest we take it out of the room and hang it up outside, which she goes to do. I go back to making the bed. She comes back in and starts to help me, I ask her to take that thing out of the room or let me do it, because it's making my throat worse. She lectures me on how I have no focus and jump too quickly between activities, and takes the comforter out, with a warning that I'll never get the blanket into its cover on my own. Once she leaves and there are no longer pillows falling on the comforter, I manage to stuff it into its cover in about 30 seconds, and proceed to finish making the bed in a minute.

***

In the morning, she takes piles of clothes and asks me if I want to take them with me. I say no. I've said no to these clothes before, begged her to throw them out or give them away.

Mom: But they're still good.
A.: Then YOU wear them. I have no use for them.
Mom: They were yours.
A." Yes, 15 years ago. I don't see why that means I have to wear them now.

This is particularly ironic because there are things I've wanted to keep-- books, etc.-- that she's just as adamant about throwing out, and I have to argue with her to keep them. Not even to keep them in her house-- just to keep them.

Mom: Do you really need to keep this book?
A.: Yes.
Mom: But why? It doesn't look good.

Anyway... finally she let me get up without having to agree to take the bag of clothes I wore in middle school with me. But I did come downstairs wearing a pair of pants apparently similar to those in the bag--really, just because it was there, and I go to Boston with a limited number of clothes, and save those for days I actually plan to leave the house. So I have to hear about it.

Mom: How are those pants different from those you've rejected?
A.: I wouldn't wear these outside the house.
Mom: But they're so comfortable- more comfortable than jeans.
A.: I still wouldn't wear them outside the house.

And so on for a few more rounds.

It's not the clothes. It's not the food. It's the persistence... why not suggest something and then just DROP it??? Why is that so difficult? You're not going to convince another person, another adult, to eat something she doesn't feel like eating or wear something she won't wear, by arguing with her about it. Just let it GO.