Never fade

My mom has a few mom-isms that are pretty unique to her.

"Wonderful only lasts for so long." True. Too true. Frequently brought up as a reminder whenver anything that was going wonderfully right suddenly goes horribly wrong.

"All I did was give you a body." For ages, Matt and I have been the spitting image of our Dad (and of each other -- to the point of being mistaken for twins on occasion). And past his looks, we inherited a lot of his personality, too, so that Mom began to complain that the only thing we'd gotten from her is life itself, and even then, God gets the credit for that.

"Men never go away. Not really." The men in your (a woman's) life may fade; they may leave; you may not hear of them or from them for months, years ... even decades. But as her experience today taught (and as my own experience in the last couple of months has been evidence), they never actually go away until the day one of you dies.

Mom's latest example:

"The phone rang, and when I answered it, this man's voice on the other end ask if I was Theresa. I said yes, and ... Sarah, it was R-----."

I gasped. "No! NO! The letter guy?!? The guy who wrote you that awful letter when you broke up with him?"

"Yes!"

"Did you recite the letter back at him, remind him of all the awful things he'd called you?"

"No ..."

"Did he call to finally apologize for the letter?"

"No ... said he'd just been thinking of me, so he looked me up ..."

"What a jerk!"

"Wanted to know if I ever make it back to the Dallas area, wanted to know if I'm married. I said, 'Yep -- as a matter of fact, I just celebrated my thirty-fifth wedding anniversary with a wonderful man.'"

"The wonderful man you left R----- for, thank goodness."

"And no, I don't make it back to Texas much."

"What a jerk!"

"He's on his second marriage, just celebrated his tenth anniversary."

"That is just too bizarre ..."

"You see? -- they never go away."

Mom was dating R----- when she met Dad. She broke up with R----- so she could be with Dad, and when she did, R----- wrote her the most god-awful letter, calling her and her family everything but human and decent. White trash. Poor farmers. Never last (the marriage). And so on.

"Great. So I'll be 60 someday, just sitting there, minding my own business, and ________ is going to saunter through the door, wanting another chance."

She laughed. I was calculating what I'd be able to throw when I'm 60.

So there it is, ladies. They never go away. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they're lurking somewhere, wondering how to Google you. I think it's more true the more awful they were to you. They want to apologize, but not really -- or they want to make sure you're happy enough now that you've forgotten most of what they did ... said ... wrote ... But they never go away.