Mom came in late Friday evening; she'll be here till mid-March, escaping the brutal New England winter weather. She has come out for the winter for many years now, and we've settled into a routine division of labor while she's here.
Still, the last time she was here, I was in Houston having my surgery, and when I came back, I was pretty messed up from it, and so the normal routine/division of labor was all shot to hell, so I've had to re-negotiate everything.
I got frustrated after a particularly long string of "How do you want me to do this...?" questions, because they were obviously coming from a place where Mom didn't realize I am perfectly capable of doing these things for myself. I had to say: I'm not sick anymore! I can do this stuff, you know!
I know it's very hard on Mom to watch her baby (that would be me) go through so many surgeries and procedures and whatnot. It's awesome that she has been able to help so much with the kids and the house when I can't handle it. But I'm having to constantly push back against the assumption that I'm still sick and can't do day-to-day things.
It's getting better, day by day we figure out whose turf is whose. It helps me to remember that all Mom's impulses are coming not from her desire to control the place but from her wanting me to be well and the kids to be happy and all of us to be properly fed: from love, basically.
It works... but it does take some getting used to.
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