Best Come-Back EVER......

For some reason, my mother always seems to try to get the best of Hubby. She doesn't necessarily say MEAN things, just POINTED things. Maybe deep down she doesn't truly believe that he is as good a guy as he comes across as, so she's trying to ferret out the REAL Hubby.

Good luck with that.

The first time Hubby met my mother, it was on Christmas Day. No, I didn't choose that day to introduce him to the whole (wacky) family. Mom and Katydid went to a movie after lunch on Christmas, so Hubby and I decided to go see the same movie. It was an awkward setting at best, meeting my (scary) mother in the lobby of a movie theater. But I had to give Hubby kudos for trying.

He put his arm around me and said to my mother, "I'm going to take care of your daughter."

I'll pause here while you all go, "Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww......."

[Pause]

[Pause}

Are you finished yet? No?

[Pause]

Then my mother, in all her glory, said, "You'd better."

Not in a nice way. Not in a Mama-Bear-I'm-all-about-protecting-my-cub way. Just in a bitchy way.

Well. Nice job of getting THAT relationship off on the right foot.

Now to her credit, there were all sorts of extenuating circumstances regarding our relationship (mine and Hubby's, not mine and Mom's) that I won't go into here, but really? Is that the best she could do?

I don't mean to imply that there have been multiple interactions along the same lines, but Mom hasn't ever really warmed up to Hubby. She will tell anyone who will listen (and listen and listen and listen) how happy we are and what a "perfect life" we have, but sometimes I wonder if she's just trying to convince herself.

Yesterday we had our Mother's Day gathering at her place. Well, the place she and my brother share. We had originally planned a picnic up on the hill, a place that I dearly love and would happily move to if they had any kind of decent internet service at all, but it rained and rained and rained yesterday. Buckets and buckets of rain. Drought-ending sheets of rain. I'm guessing you get the picture.

My brother has a "shop" (shed, workshop, storage area, barn) on his property, and he and his wife (and Mom, I assume) spent hours and hours cleaning it up and making it a suitable substitute location for our Mother's Day gathering. (Mom's complaint: "At least up on the hill we wouldn't have to put up with a RADIO.") We had a very nice meal, I enlisted the help of several family members in solving some of the Logos quiz items that had stumped me, and Mom inexplicably gave each of her children a gift in the form of a check. Wow.

When we were sitting around playing/talking/laughing/listening to the DAMNED radio, Mom came over to Hubby, seated next to me, and draped her arm across my shoulders.

"I want you to know," she said to Hubby, "that this is my baby."

There was just the briefest pause before Hubby replied, "Mine too."

Go ahead, I'll wait.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww......

As my brother put it, "You can do whatever the hell you want to for the rest of the summer. You just earned a whole [bunch] of points with that one."

I couldn't have been prouder of Hubby in that moment if he had presented me with a diamond and yellow gold tennis bracelet.

I still don't know what point she was trying to make. It's been 15 years, and I'm pretty sure he has established the fact that he has indeed taken care of me.

Whatever the point, it was lost in the furor of laughter and "Awwwwwwwwwwwwww....."

Best come-back EVER.

Go Hubby.