Mi Mama

It’s like I can’t help myself when I’m around my mother. I give myself a lecture before I see her and tell myself that this time I will be easy-going and just let her be who she is, but I never do.

When she comes to visit me and tries to get me to change my ways, I get so frustrated and sometimes offended. I mean she’s known me all these years and still she can’t just take me as I am. Why can’t she just accept me?

I don’t know why she can’t just accept me, but I’m beginning to think it’s not her. I can be dense, but I’m not a complete idiot and I have to admit that I am guilty of not accepting her, of constantly trying to change her.

I can’t stand it when she critiques things in my house; it drives me absolutely bonkers. She rearranges things when I’m not looking and as soon as I see the change, I don’t even consider whether it is better or not before I change it back.

Today, my mother made me realize that I am a jerk and that she is not. You see apparently I come to her house and although I do not have the audacity to move things around, I do have the nerve to tell her what I don’t like about her house. What’s wrong with me? Why do I think that is any better than what she does when she visits me?

What I do is worse because when my mother changes things in my house she isn’t doing it to be a jerk, she is doing it to be helpful, to supposedly make things easier for me. When I visit my mother and bitch, I’m not trying to make anything easier for her; I’m just being a bratty child.

I complained about a table she put in the bathroom I use when I visit. That bathroom is really small and the table bugs me because it gets in my way, but you know what? It is her house and she can do whatever she wants in it. I could tell that when I complained about the table, I hurt my mom’s feelings. If she had done the same thing to me in my home, I would have glued the table to the bathroom floor so she couldn’t move it when I wasn’t looking.

My mother is not me and she does not do things just to spite me. Even though I hurt my mother’s feelings for no good reason, she responded to my brattiness with love. I left her house for a few hours and when I came back, the offending table was no longer in the bathroom.

This gesture makes me cry because the only reason my mother removed the table was to try and please me and it made me realize just how much my mother tries to please me. She makes me calabacitas every single time I visit because she knows how much I like them. She buys me clothes I don’t like and complain about because every once in awhile she manages to get me something I do like and that makes her so happy that she’s willing to always keep trying.

She moved a table for me and made me realize that she might not always “get” me, but she always loves me. Even when I’m being a jerk.

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