On Tuesday nights, when I go to meditation class, The Boy goes to mom's for dinner. Last night, when I picked him up after class, mom asked me to have lunch with her today. In light of how much I appreciated her last week, I agreed, thinking it'd be nice to spend a little time with her.
Mom is not an evil woman. She's just an unreasonable woman. She's fully entitled to her unreasonableness. I'm getting that way myself. But here's the thing. Our whole family has been combatting weight for as long as I can remember. We're not obese because we've been combatting the weight. But we can each shed ten or thirty pounds.
Recently, mom's doctor told her she has to lose weight, maybe twenty pounds. And her cholesterol is high. She was going to see her doctor after lunch today to confirm that.
For lunch then, she said, "I just want a light lunch, I'm not that hungry." I said, "That's great. I'm not that hungry either, so we'll eat light." Despite that, we over ordered, granted, inadvertently. We were sharing a noodles dish and we didn't know the BBQ beef wraps was such a huge platter.
I am trying to be mindful of my eating so I stopped eating when I started to feel full. We managed to eat half the noodles dish, but barely touched the beef wraps.
"That's all you're having?" mom said. Mom is a formidable foe when it comes to dieting. After much badgering from her, I managed one more mouthful. The whole time she was complaining about how full she was, she continued to eat, trying to finish up the dishes.
Finally, I said, "If you are full, why are you eating?"
"Can't waste the food. We paid for it. It's like throwing away money if we don't eat it up."
"Your doctor told you to lose weight and your cholesterol is high. Eating when you are already full will make that worse. You will have to pay for medication when you know the solution is to lose weight. You're throwing away money after wasted money."
"No, no, the government pays for the medication."
"You would rather abuse your body and take drugs than to waste food?" I was so tempted to tell her that the government doesn't pay for all her meds, that Bro Bro supplements her payments without telling her, that we all pay for it through our taxes.
But this is more the mom I am familiar with. Who was that helpful woman living at my house last week? Right, she did overfeed The Boy and left all kinds of groceries in my fridge. She's not an evil woman. She's just misapplying her talent. Those starving kids in Africa could use a few doses of her overfeeding.
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Recently, I said to a friend "Having my mother live with me drives me insane, but I haven't seen her in so long, I can't remember why". So it being March Break, I arranged to have Dim Sum with her and then she spent the rest of the day at my house. Within 5 minutes of contact with her I remembered why she drives me crazy. I was hesitant to say when you were so glowingly appreciative of her last week, but I sure laughed when you woke up with her in your bed staring at you. When she was here the other day, I was working at my computer and she sat across from me and stared at me for 15 minutes until I finally exploded and asked whether she had anything better to do. She didn't. Then I remembered how the last time she stayed the night, the next morning I was towelling off after my shower and she sat in the bathroom, on the edge of the tub, picking her teeth with a toothpick, watching me dry between my toes. Sounds so innocuous, but it's insidious. Not to mention the overfeeding, the anxiety about dressing the kids, the hyperbole in her speech (Oh how deathly (say la), you didn't put cream on your face) and the blatant racism (look at all the Chinese girls in your graduating class, why aren't you friends with them?), etc. etc. etc.
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