Mom in Stuff

With a stretch of bad weather moving in for the weekend, naturally this is when things start breaking down. Megan called me yesterday to tell me that cover for her hot tub doesn’t seem to be fitting correctly. I told her that didn’t make sense but I would look at it with her if she wanted.

The hot tub is empty and covered for the winter. It’s not quite a year old so everything should still be fine with it, or otherwise it should be a warranty issue. She showed me what she was talking about, how the cover just didn’t quite completely fit exactly right. We both played with it and and adjusted it but it almost felt like it was either defective or made for a tub that was a slightly different size. I told her to call the company that installed it and that they’d most likely fix the problem for free.

However, that didn’t solve the immediate problem that the hot tub would be filled up with ice and snow and dirt during the storm we’re having. So we went to Home Depot.

Walking through the aisles we bumped into a woman that I work with, so we stopped and chatted for a moment. I introduced Megan as “my daughter-in-law,” which is a title I frequently use for her when talk about her to people that don’t know her. It didn’t cross my mind until yesterday that I used to call her “my friend” and I strangely changed to that other description after she and Olsen started getting serious. It’s not that I no longer think of Megan as my friend, and I feel like that change happened subconsciously without me really giving it any thought.

Not long after I’d called her my DIL, we were on opposite ends of an aisle looking at different things and I heard her call out to me, “I think this might be what we’re looking for.” I didn’t respond immediately because I’d been reading the back of some packaging.

So she yelled a little louder, “Mom! I think this is what we’re looking for.”

That got my attention. As I walked over to see what she had picked out, I made the conscious decision to not react at all to her calling me that. I thought about it. There was nothing wrong with her calling me that. I wasn’t offended by it. It just caught be my surprise. I’m pretty sure I’ve never had anyone call me “mom” other than my three kids.

We bought the thing she picked out and went home. After we parked in her garage, I started to head home when she said, “It’s OK that I called you ‘mom,’ right?” I wondered if I had been obviously pondering it and she could feel it somehow.

I responded that of course it was fine, if that’s how she felt about me. Trying to jokingly imply that being called “mom” made me feel old, which didn’t really make sense but I wanted to make light of the situation.

She shrugged and said she felt like it was more like a nickname than a title. I told her I liked that.

I was probably about 20 feet away from her, walking to my door, when she called out, “Thanks for the help tonight, mom! Love you!”

I still don’t really know what to make of her!

Last updated January 17, 2019