For many women I know, the mother-daughter relationship is a continual work in progress.  Attempting to figure out the complexities, the absurdities, the mysteries of this all-important bond is a recurring conversational exercise with me and my friends.   How my perception of my mother and our relationship continues to change is especially fascinating to me.   Every year that goes by, I discern aspects of my mother, and myself, that years ago I never imagined existed.  Not all of these revelations have left me warm and fuzzy.  

But I think I've traveled through the largest portion of the blame-it-on-Mom (or Dad, or parents, or family) stage  that most adults go through because my mother was just here for a three-week visit, and I enjoyed it.   Widowed for over three years, she's finally into what I'll call the widow slide.  Many parents in their later years stick to their hard, often conservative, opinions, as long as they have their partner to back them up, but once they're solo, within the immediate family anyhow, they've lost their generational back-up.   So the remaining parent can either rigidly maintain decades-old critical opinions and remain an outcast in the evolving society of their family, or they can begin to slide toward center.   Indicators of the slide?  Grandma quits criticizing the kids' rampant computer use, and learns to email.  She tries her daughter's favorite meal, raw fish.   Maybe she can't embrace her granddaughter's nose piercing or her grandson wearing earrings, but she at least keeps her negative thoughts to herself now.  That's progress!  

None of these examples describe my 88-year-old mother, but she has so softened her presentation on sharing her opinions, this time around she was actually interesting to listen to!  She's also added flirting with my husband, and I can't blame her.  He is apparently the rare son-in-law who has constantly extended an invitation to come and stay, and meant it.  He missed her when she left, and said so.  But I am my mother's daughter, and apparently could not keep my mouth shut, leave the topic on a positive note, and move on.   

"I know it's really minor, but there's just one thing that I still struggle with."  

Standing over the kitchen counter, munching a plum, he looks over at me still sitting at the dinner table.  

"I know she doesn't have that much energy, and her balance is off from the stroke, so dressing is more of a chore.   But she doesn't seem to care what she's wearing.  That's hard for me.  When we went to the cranberry bog to walk the dog, she had on light blue shorts, a turquoise and brown top, tan ankle socks with a black stripe on top, and those awful brown sandals."

My husband continues to look at me, saying nothing.  He knows how much I like clothes, design, anything that exudes beauty.  He knows my mother used to, too.  My mother was a hot ticket in her heyday, a fraternity dream girl who even now needs little encouragement to talk about the fox stole her father bought her before she left for college.  "You're getting lost in minutia," he says.  

He continues to look at me, and I know he knows I'm still mentally trying to work this through to a place where I'm not bothered.  My husband, who lost his father 12 years ago, who never had the opportunity to go through the blame-it-on Dad years and come out on the other side with a genuine relationship repeats, "You're getting lost in minutia."  He pauses.  "What you're missing is—she's here."   

I don't hate it when my husband is right.  I'm reminded of one of the main reasons I fell in love with him in the first place—his rare ability to emerge out of his male oblivion, and nail me.  

I'm looking forward to my mother's next visit.  Because I can.