Well, saw my mother yesterday. She looks old and that was kind of weird to me. I realized that she isn’t going to be around much longer and that has made me start wondering what I should do about that if anything. We had dinner. I specifically wanted Noah there and at the last minute she invited my nephew as well. (Nephew in picture is not the same one as who went to dinner) Most of the time was spent with Noah and my nephew talking. I’m ok with that.

Due to aforementioned husband and nephew talking my mom and I didn’t say much to one another. It was sort of stuff and uncomfortable. She gave me a bunch of pictures of me as a baby that she doesn’t want to keep anymore. Wow, uhm, ok. I guess she saved the snapshots and she still has small versions of most of the pictures but she gave me the larger copies. I was an incredibly adorable small child and now I have evidence. I feel like her doing that is cementing her opinion that she and my siblings are not my family, my family consists of the people I have chosen. I’m tempted to bring one or more of the baby pictures to my adopted mom and my adopted dad in some weird symbolic gesture.

I freaked out about the very idea of seeing her before it happened and then it was… very anticlimactic. I suppose that is good. If I treat her with as much familiarity as I do my coworkers we can get through a conversation without fighting. Oh wait, I talk to my coworkers about more personal things than I do her.

Mom mentioned that she would like to come up to see my house but she doesn’t have the money to pay for the gas. She also gave me that very familiar “You want *what* from me?” look when I told her what her half of the bill for dinner was. Given my experience with my mother I believe she expected me to offer to give her gas money and to pay for dinner. After all, hadn’t I mentioned that I could afford to remodel my house because it isn’t big enough? I didn’t go there though. I just told her what she needed to pay and was silently grateful that she isn’t going to ask when she can come see my house.

Boundaries are hard.