Meeting the Family

It came and then it went.

I met the brothers. Let’s discuss…Brother #1 – the middle brother came along with Cowboy to pick me up at the airport after flying in from Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City was great but we need to work on improving their airport if I’m going to move there. Seriously.

They pick me up and we go eat lunch. This brother is the sensitive, deep soul of the family. He is very philosophical and looks into the deeper meaning of things. It was such a breath of hope to listen to him. We then went to his place, where I’ve now seen the largest DVD collection ever. Yes, I stole a few for the weekend. That’s how I roll. We got into many conversations discussing his movies and what I would recommend for his collection.

After a few hours they dropped me off to my mom’s. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t seen my mom in ages and then there are times where I feel I just saw her yesterday. I don’t know which is bad – wait – I’m happy I saw her, it was just off. She had a tendancy to treat me like her teenage daughter and I wasn’t having it. There was the snide little comments such as, ‘Stop furrowing your brow like that. You’ll wrinkle up’; ‘You need to save your money’; ‘You need to stay at your job’; ‘Don’t eat that much bread’; and the killer, ‘Don’t sit like that, you look like a bum’ – oh my gosh if she said that one more time, I swear I could’ve died. And she is never like that, well at least not as much as she was, so I don’t know so I’m moving on… I’m still trying to wrap up my emotions and thoughts on it.

Saturday, I spent the entire day with her. We were invited to go to the zoo with Cowboy’s family. My mother had already been and really didn’t want to spend her free time at a zoo. OK – but what about me? Feeling the future guilt, I just stayed with her and ran errands with her – things she doesn’t get to do since she is so ‘alone’. Don’t get me started on how much I heard that one.

Sunday finally arrives and this is the day. I am so excited. Christmas morning excited. Noon didn’t get there quick enough for us to go get Cowboy and get this show on the road. Our plan was to invite my brother over to the house and cook out. The four of us.

When we went to Cowboy’s other brother’s house – uhm 3 blocks away from my mom – try that for irony, the whole clan was there. Brother #1 and this time I get to meet Brother #2 – who is actually the older brother. He is the rebel. He is also very very handsome. He has tattoos everywhere. I’m not kidding. The personalities of all of them couldn’t be more different. Which I thought was awesome to see them all together and see them interact. Brother #2 is married and has 3 kids – all under the age of eleven. They were so cute. So, so, so cute. So I couldn’t hate on my mom for just falling for them. They were just so excited to recant their zoo adventure to people.
You can imagine, three kids telling us about a day at the zoo – I swear we were sitting there for hours and it was like half an hour. Eek.

As we were leaving with Cowboy in tow, my mom extended an invitation to all of them to come over for our cookout. WHOA, hold up. I’m so happy she did that for two reasons – I wanted to spend more time and get to know Brother #2 since this was the only time I had with him and his family and you could see how sad it was for Cowboy to leave them (this being the last time he’d see them before he leaves for Iraq) and come go with us. I’m very unhappy that she did it because of course, they accepted and the next couple events.

We go from there straight back to the house because now we have to prepare for more company including children. My mother doesn’t have anything entertaining for a child, let alone three. We also had to go get more drinks and food. Plus I still had to prepare a lot of what we were going to be cooking. You can imagine, it was a minor rush on our parts.

No time for Cowboy and my mom to really sit down and talk.

Then his family showed up. That was no time at all for her to get to know him. Especially when she was too darn busy making best friends with the kids inside when all the adults were out on the patio talking. Great for me to get to know the family way better. Not so much for Cowboy who never had a chance to speak to my mom, one on one. And you can see where that fact is eating me up.

That is the only time they will speak before he goes to Iraq. It’s the only moment she had to get to know him better. Him, being the love of my life as I know it right now. That was it.

I seriously doubt my mom could tell anyone anything about him (that she didn’t already know from me) besides what he looks like. She could sure tell you everything you need to know about his nieces and nephew. And to that, I’m not sure what I’m feeling.

Regret? Anger? Remorse? Disappointed.

The family stayed over for hours, it was very close to midnight when they left. We were all pooped. We cleaned up and everyone hit the sack.

The next day Cowboy and I had to be up early to be picked up by Brother #1, he was taking us to breakfast and then to the airport. My mom was busy getting ready for work and we were busy getting organized for the airport. Still no conversations to be had between any of us. It was just horrible.

I wanted to cry last night when it all hit me. It’s just not the way I wanted it to happen. I wanted my mom to get to know him, at least to see how I’m in love with him. I wanted her to see and hear all his great qualities. I don’t know. I do blame her, and I hate blaming her for it, but seriously. How could I not? Ugh. I’m just in a deep funk over this and don’t know how to shake it off.

I want a do over.