Emily, dippin-dots, and Don’s sleepless night

I came back to the B&B in the afternoon with my daughter in tow.  Actually, I was in her tow if one is being precise.  And the bathtub was cleaned and the room remarkably warmer.  It made me wonder if the B&B owner had looked up my blog?  My husband had nightmares all night and called me at 6 AM his time, his voice all scratchy and sleepless.  That’s how I knew how worried he was.  Which is really sweet, but quite unnecessary.

“You have to move,” he said.  “I couldn’t sleep all night.”

That’s when I realized that perhaps, in my no-wireless-fury, I had overstated all the other small, niggling, and really not a big deal “problems” with the B&B here on my blog.

Tucking into bed last night, I looked around me, thought about my childhood and really I couldn’t have imagined something this fancy and clean growing up.  And I have stayed at relatives and friends houses, with way less to offer.  I think it’s just that when one pays for things, one has certain expectation is all.  I was upset and so all the jarring notes stood out.  The room is very pretty, and now with the tub clean and the room warmer and me having found both breakfast and internet access at a café around 6 blocks away.  I’m totally fine.  Happy even. 

And part of me wishes that the B&B woman hadn’t read my blog and perhaps gotten her feelings hurt, but the practical part, is very happy she did, because I was nice and toasty warm last night.

“Honey,” I replied to Don, in a soothing sort of way.  “Really, I’m fine.  It’s nice enough here.” (What a wonderful thing it is to have a partner who has decided to carry the worry.  Now I can be all laize faire, and generous.) And yes, I know I misspelled that, but there is no Oxford’s at this cafe.

It’s an interesting sensation, visiting Emily here.  Her all grown-up.  Picking me up in her car.  Me being in the passenger seat.  And not only in the literal sense.  She’s taking such thoughtful care of me.  Has researched and made reservations for lunches and dinners and every place we’ve eaten, fantastically good. 

And this morning she called me, as she was heading out the door to her workshop with a visiting poet and then the obligatory luncheon that follows, to tell me that she has located a place that has dippin-dots. 

How sweet is that?  I had mentioned in passing, a while back on the phone, the dippin-dots as something I was planning on doing when I was here because nobody sells dippin-dots in all of B.C. and they didn’t have any all the way up to Bend Oregon, and so I looked it up Online and found that yes, they do sell them here in this little University town that she lives in. 

I was just chatting, you know how mothers do.  Talking about inconsequential stuff, because they don’t want to intrude, budge in too close; breathe up all their children’s space and air.  But Emily, she remembered that I had mentioned it, and she looked it up and made a plan for us to go by a place that sold them this afternoon.  And I can’t tell you how it warmed my heart.  Made me feel loved. 

Sometimes, I feel all bumbly around my grown children.  All fingers and thumbs.  Inadvertently sticking my foot, my mouth in places where it would be best they stayed out of.  Places that seem innocent enough topics, but still, I miss the nuances and get it all wrong. 

It’s hard sometimes, letting go of that totally ridiculous notion if I was a really good mother I would know just how to act, in any circumstance that arose. I would be able to be supportive, but not crippling, loving, but not smothering. 

See, my impulse is to give everything to my kids, emotional, physical, and financial.  But whom would that help?  Who would that giving be for?  Not them.  They don’t want a wishy-washy-bending-over-backwards mother.  How could they respect that?  I have to fight my impulse to make myself small so that I won’t cast an impossible shadow.  They are talented and smart and will find, forge their own way in the world.  In giving too much, I would actually be taking away. 

Posted by Meg Tilly on Friday, April 04, 2008 in Chewing the Fat

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