Because I can't lie to you

Yes, it's late Friday night, and yes, I'm really really tired and want to go to bed, and yes, I'm incredibly sore from possibly the worst workout I've ever done (Running 2.5 miles to a track/park area; doing lunges all.the.way.around. said track -- that's 100 meters, people -- and doing 25 sit-ups and 25 push-ups every fourth of the way around; only to run 2.5 miles back to the car. I'm officially walking like an old lady today.) ... and yes, it's almost midnight and I'm still working.

But because I promised you I'd do this post today, I'm writing it now. I may never give you a promise with a deadline again.

So here goes ...

I was already in Oklahoma for my old roomie's graduation. I thought I could kill two birds with one stone and swing through my mom's hometown on my way back to Dallas. Because I knew the moment I mentioned to her I was considering the visit I'd have to follow through, I waited until the day before to mention it to my mom. So that Sunday morning -- which happened to be Mother's Day (just a coincidence) -- I got up early and made the drive to her town.

When I got close to her home, I called her, and decided I'd meet her and her husband at Chi!i's, since none of us had eaten lunch yet. I was glad we'd be meeting in a public place so I could avoid some overly emotional reunion at her house.

When I walked in the restaurant, my mom and her husband were already there. I gave each of them a hug before I sat down with them. I had worried my mom would give some drawn-out hug or something, but she didn't. Whew.

Over the course of lunch, my mom talked about the weirdest things. She told me about her trip to Oklahoma C!ty with her husband the day before, and how they'd gone to the movie THEE-ate-uhr. My mom talked about that experience for a while. She said it was like heaven, and she talked about how big it was and how good the popcorn was. She told me how the movie theater in their town doesn't salt the popcorn, so you have to salt it yourself, so once you get past the top layer it tastes really blah ... and you'd think they'd want to salt the heck out of it because then people will be buying more drinks.

I told my mom about our Stud!o Mov!e Gr!ll theaters where you can eat dinner while you're at the movies. I was just making conversation, but my mom actually turned to her husband (we were seated at the bar to avoid the endless wait for a table) to say to him, "She said they have THEE-ate-uhrs where you can eat while you watch the movie!"

My mom asked to see my ring. She noted I was wearing my hair shorter. She asked about K. Her husband asked where K was. (Surely he knew K was in Iraq ...) They asked about my bike ride the week before and had lots of questions about my helmet and bike.

My mom started filling me in on the big news scandals from her town over the past year. She told me about her new job. She told me about the new $7 million building of the company her husband works for. They talked about the chairs and how neat they were ("They're like $1,000 apiece!"). As they described them, I realized they may very well be the exact same chairs all the employees at my office have -- only it never occurred to me to tell anyone about the chairs (they're chairs).

My mom went on about the big TV screens and how they can use them to have meetings via satellite with people in their office in Houston (the same thing we do with our other offices across the country). By the time she got to telling me about the ceiling ("There's no ceiling! You can see the wires and tubing. It's all just exposed!" Which is exactly what we have at work), I started to wonder if living in such a big city has made me spoiled and maybe even a little snobby.

I had noticed my mom's ... Southern, if you will, pronunciation of the word "theater." It occurred to me that I used to pronounce the word that way, but I stopped in college.

I tried to consider things from her perspective. While a $7 million building is no big deal in Dallas, it's very big for her hometown. And maybe the technology, the ceiling and, yes, even the chairs are a big deal there too. But we'd still managed to talk for 10 minutes about movie theater popcorn.

Was I too snobby and spoiled to carry on small talk? But then as I thought about it more, I realized I talk about much smaller things than popcorn with my dad and friends all the time. I'm perfectly capable of talking about things like chairs and popcorn and ceilings.

I can talk about small things all day. But this wasn't typical small talk. It wasn't laid-back, comfortable small talk. It was just empty conversation. She was nervous.

After lunch, we headed back to her house. When we got inside, my mom asked, "Do you want to sit in the living room or in the back yard?"

I hadn't prepared for the small cold front that came through. I was only wearing flip flops and short sleeves. My mom was in a sweatshirt and pants. "It's a little cool out," I said.

"Well, let's go sit in the yard. We can get some sun," my mom answered. I'd only done the M$150 the week before, so I wasn't interested in getting any sun, but I didn't want to argue over where we were sitting. I did wonder why she'd bothered asking where I wanted to go if she wasn't going to listen anyway.

So we went to the back yard. Just as I sat down in a chair, she called me over to her little goldfish pond to show me the fish she and her husband had bought the day before. There were easily 20 fish in this pond, so pointing out 3 and expecting me to know which ones she's talking about was a little pointless, but I tried my best. We stared into the pond for about 10 minutes before I sat down. We sat outside for over an hour talking.

When we stepped inside to get something to drink, I took the opportunity to fetch my laptop from my car so I could show my mom and her husband pictures from the bike ride. After we looked at them, I waited for my mom to say something about wedding pictures. She didn't, so I asked if she wanted to see them. She said yes, so I pulled up the album. I went through our professional pictures and then the ones taken on my camera. She said they were pretty, that the beach was gorgeous and that I looked pretty. She laughed when I pointed out that K had left his yellow L!vestrong bracelet on during the ceremony. (groan)

After we finished looking through the pictures, I realized it was an hour past when I'd intended to leave. I had to get on the road so I could pick up Piper from being boarded. It was good because it gave me a nice out. I had a reason I needed to leave, so it wasn't like I was cutting the visit short or something.

We'd spent about 4 hours together. They didn't go badly, obviously, but they weren't awesome either. As I thought about it on my way back to Dallas, I became more and more convinced that my mom was just nervous. I'd seen her goldfish pond many times before, and she'd never tried to point out specific fish to me or made me stare at it for 10 minutes.

When I got inside my apartment, I called my mom to let her know I'd made it home safely -- and that I'd gotten sunburned from being outside (I was very annoyed at that, especially since I had wanted to stay inside to begin with! I did my best to keep those feelings to myself.). I told my mom how much I had to do that night and how badly I wanted to just go to sleep. She told me to put it all off until the next night and to go to bed early.

It wasn't that simple, though. I needed to get those things done that night -- things like changing my sheets and making a care package for K. My mom called me a couple times more that night to tell me to go to bed. I didn't. I was a little annoyed and worried that the visit had given her the impression that she could bombard me with phone calls.

Luckily, though, that was the only night she did that. We're still only talking a couple times a week. Right now, I like it that way. I wish we could talk more, but I think baby steps are very important. And they seem to be working right now.

We don't have plans to see each other again yet, but I'm sure we will eventually. And I'm sure on that visit, we'll have much more interesting things to talk about -- especially since we can cross ceilings, movie popcorn and goldfish off our list.