Parental Visit, Day One: Breakthroughs!

It will come as no shock to anyone who reads this blog that I have occasionally imagined problems where there aren’t any.  And I’ve also been known to anticipate and plan for trouble that doesn’t actually manifest.  And I know this, and I enjoy the pleasant surprise.

But I’ll tell you, right now, I am stunned. 

Mom and Dad arrived Wednesday night, bearing gifts for the kids and a double armload of family history.   And I mean that literally.

My mother’s first cousin, who was the family genealogist and archivist, passed away suddenly a few months ago.*  She had said that she was going to send me copies of her files on our shared family, but didn’t get around to it.  Mom had offered to ask the executor** if she could make copies of the files, and maybe some family photos before he bestowed them on whomever.

Instead, he gave her all of it.  And she gave them to me.***

So we went through all the photographs yesterday afternoon, my mother naming all the relatives for my, telling stories . . . and making negative body comparisons to almost all of them. 

 ”Oh, I have so-and-so’s thighs, and look how much fatter Aunt Whosit got in just five years—just like I did (heavy sigh) . . . “ 

When I mentioned how I looked like Aunt Anne and Older Daughter looked more like Mom’s father’s family. Mom said, ”Oh, poor kid.”

“Mom,” I said, through my teeth.  “She looks like Aunt Cora, who was a stunner.”

Pause. “Yes, yes she does.  You’re right, I’m sorry.  I have a bad habit of doing that, don’t I?”

 

And then I found a photo of a beautiful little girl.  “Oh, isn’t she cute,” I said.  “You can tell she’s one of ours, and isn’t she lovely.”

 

Mom said, “Oh, is that Cousin Rhetta?”

 

“No.  It’s you.  And you were beautiful and you are beautiful and you probably won’t ever believe that, but it’s true.”

 She was quiet for a couple of scrapbook pages.  Then, “I thought I was so awful looking when I was a teenager, but I wasn’t, was I?  I was really cute.”

“And you are still beautiful,” I said.  “How can you miss?  You look like all these woman and you look like your granddaughters.  And me, too, of course.”

She grinned.  “You got me there,” she said.

YES!!!

But that’s not all:

I had left my copy of Linda Bacon’s HAES book on the coffee table next to Lessons from the Fatosphere, meaning to mention them both later.

This morning, Mom came out of the spare bedroom with her thumb in the middle of the HAES book.  “I think I need copies of this for my Curves nutrition seminars,” she said.  “Can I buy them around here?”

Isn’t it weird when you’re all geared up for a fight and the other side wanders over with a couple of white flags and some doughnuts?

________

*I miss her very much.  She lived three states away, but we had a great e-mail relationship.  Last week, I started to send her some new photos of the kids before I remembered.

**Who is on hte other side of my cousin’s family)

***Including two beautiful porcelain and composite dolls. SQUEEEEEE!!!

Tags: HAES, parents, self-acceptance