meddling

So as you can imagine, my mother feels entitled to impose her thoughts, beliefs and lifestyle on her grown children. The last conversation like this led to my disclosure that I had chosen to "live my life in sin" by cohabiting with Rick. And well, you know how that went down.

But my parents have both had time to back off that ledge. Dad remains quiet. My mother continues to force feed what she believes is the right thing for me to do. Now it's,"why don't you just get married and make it legal." Yack, yack, yack, yack, yack. Nevermind that I am almost 32 and Rick is 37.

On Saturday, Rick and I were heading out for a day of errands, and Mom had called to get packing needs lined up for my brother to join me us in Europe. But of course, she took the opportunity to launch, yet again, into the "just get married" rhetoric. Rick finds it all so very amusing, and playfully tells me that he wants to talk to her.

I look at him like he's nuts, but say ok and hand him the phone. Mom and Rick on the same phone frequency. This could be very interesting. I sat back to watch his reaction, because I knew that mom was not filtering anything for Rick. He had such a good sense of humor about it, reassuring her with "That's the plan, Stan." Or occasionally pushing back on her by saying, "Now, not everyone does it that way, do they?" It didn't seem to phase Rick in the least that my mother was pressuring him to pop the question. Mom on the other hand, didn't get Rick's sense of humor and said, "he's a nutty buddy." Whatever that means. :)

I left it as a very odd, but harmless conversation between the two of them. I, of course, then began to think more about it, and just got more and more irritated. Getting married is such a serious and personal conversation between two people. And why on earth does my mother think she has the right to spoil that with her own two cents? Plus, now I feel like there's this added pressure, and that making any of our own decisions that would solidify our future are tainted by her constant nagging.

I like where we are. We have a huge vacation coming up in a few weeks. And even if he wanted to ask me something special this year, the bad taste of family involvement seems to be more top of mind than anything else.

We do agree on one thing though -- elopement. None of this, got-to-please-your-family bullshit to contend with. Some place warm, some place with just the two of us. Some place without drama. Some place without our mothers.

Some day....