When Mom visits...

When my mother is visiting...

Useful things enter my life. I do not do the grocery shopping, so Paul buys only what is on the list. Thus, I never buy things on impulse, and don't know about many wondrous products. Mom comes, and inevitably gets twitchy halfway through the her visit. We send her off to Target, and she returns with full bags of useful things, like Tide-to-Go pens, purse-sized antibacterial wipes, boxes of Kleenex for every room, and plastic storage crates.

When my mother is visiting...

Things get organized. My laundry room is a thing of beauty. I asked Mom and Dad to organize it for my birthday present. I want to live in that room now. We painted it a funky electric blue, added shelving, and put everything into labeled boxes. Now, I know where the cell phone charger lives, so I'll no longer walk around with a dead cell phone for weeks at a time. This is progress.

Mom loves to organize. She is the one that arranges my spices in ABC order, who orders my closet by season and color, who puts my Tupperware into neatly stacked rows. The casual reader would think that I abuse my mother, but I assure you, she lives for this stuff.

One exception: When Owen was born, my mom came out to help. She got bored, because Owen was five days old and slept all the time. She decided to organize our dresser drawers. I opened one drawer after she was done and found Paul's boxers in neat rows, my underwear and bras freshly organized, and a nicely stacked pile of....condoms. I said, "Mom, um...was that weird for you?"

Her response: "Why are you using those?" I guess she's never dealt with The Pill and antibiotics.

She later said, "I'll leave the underwear drawer to you next time."

When my mother is visiting...

Junk food that I usually don't purchase mysteriously makes its way into the house. Oreos, pretzels, ice cream, Sprite, and something called a pudding ring all rest in our pantry. Mom is back in Colorado, but her sugary legacy remains.

When my mother is visiting...
Owen and Joel are never lacking an adult who wants to listen, play, read, and love them. My kids are very lucky.

When my mother is no longer visiting...
I miss her.