Did I call that or what?

[cosmolinguist]

My mom greeted me at the airport with "Oh Holly you know I don't like that!" and the kind of one-armed shoulder-squeeze that might be construed as a hug but which I knew meant she wanted to throttle me.

Fifteen hours after I'd left my house in Manchester, sleep-deprived, in huge amounts of pain from my sinus infection, having repeatedly believed I wasn't going to make it, wrung out by the anxiety and the total breakdown that I'm sure made me That Crazy Woman for the gate staff at Schipol's E19, I couldn't even figure out what it was she didn't like; I looked down at my clothes -- an old, faded dress, stained with something from my airplane dinner -- in confusion until I remembered: it was my hair.

All week I've been telling people the story of how I came back for my grandma's funeral when I was in college, in the middle of finals; a friend had a shouting match with one of her professors to rearrange hers so she could drive me. We got here in the middle of the night, a four-hour drive on slow, boring roads. And my mom greeted me with a wordless scream, because I dared to have bright red spiky hair. (When all my grandma's old-lady friends told me the next day how my grandma would have loved it, and other such approving "oh you crazy kids" type stuff, I could feel my mom seething besides me, the only one who thought it was such a bad thing.)

I tried telling her it could've been a lot worse -- I washed it until the green faded out, it's just bleached now. I also briefly thought about telling her "hey, at least I shaved my legs!" but wasn't quite tired and miserable enough for that to seem like a good idea.

Comments

[land-girl.livejournal.com]

I'm totally with you on this one.

And yet ... Rosie came home on Tuesday, needing a shower, yesterday's make up still on, and I wanted to clean her up so that she looked as lovely as I know she can!

So, what does that make me?

I think the instinct for us to groom our young can be quite strong, especially when we don't see them often. I'm happy for anybody else's children to do what they want - but mine are meant to look the way I want!

And now I've got to go and see my mother tomorrow, and even severely brain-damaged she will give me a miserable time about my weight ...

[cosmolinguist]

I know that instinct never goes away and doesn't even slow down much, if my family's anything to go by. Yesterday I wore a really cute lace shawl with my black dress, but it's one that sits off the shoulder, and not only was my mom picking at it to try to make it stay up on my shoulder, so was my grandpa's sister-in-law! Who didn't even miss a beat in talking to me, while she reached out to yank at my clothes.

I appreciate the good intentions of it -- my mom thinks I can look lovely too, but she's got a really specific idea of what that is, which I often fall short of -- but I just wish it hadn't been the first thing out of her mouth, however unrealistic that wish might be :)

I hope things go as well as they can in the visit with your mother.