The Visit

While my mom was visiting, she made Nana hot chocolate. Nana was immediately smitten with this "amazing flavor of tea" and demanded that mom make sure and teach me how to brew it correctly. We were chortling about that for a week.

Mom and I had the one run in during her visit, it lasted several hours, but it proved something to me. I truly do not have to ride the roller coaster, I can just wave as she went by. I truly feel I did that. It kept things in perspective and it allowed me to enjoy my mother's visit.

With one exception.

My mother's visit to my classroom. I will never make this mistake again. In hindsight it was probably the funniest set of things to happen in my room in sometime, but for me, personally the event was heart stopping.

Mother came to help me conduct an academic conversation with my class about Romeo and Juliet.

First Period Mom was great until the end of the period. Well, there were a few interesting moments. She told my students that I would IM her while they were taking tests, she said "a^^" and even wrote it on the board! Then at the end of the period she began to talk about her own mental health experiences. She was quick to point out that the hormonal depression that was genetic in my family and that both she and Nana suffered from had skipped me. She also explained about her own suicide attempt when she was 14. Obviously it was not successful.

Second period (and I think I have mentioned this story already) Nana was in rare form. She was cutting up and mugging for the class. Honestly it was great. Mom takes this opportunity to explain that the reason there was so much violence in Romeo and Juliet's time was that everyone was walking around with weapons. She added, to the class, "that would be like if you were walking around with a bazooka, and you a grenade, and you an oozie..." and there was nervous laughter, and then mom adds, "of course statistically, only one of us probably has a weapon." I immediately raised my hand and said, "it's not me." More laughter. Mom added that it wasn't her. Nana hold her cane over her head and says, "it's meeeeee!" The fact that we were actually on lock down because of an unaccounted for intruder in another school in the county was not lost on me. Nana also took off her name tag and put it over her mouth in that class.

Third period was when mother really hit her stride. She drew a cartoon on the board and told the students that it was "two maggots making love in dead Earnest." When I told her to knock it off, she said, "fine if you won't play with me, I'll sit over here and play with myself." Then she told the class that she was getting me a shirt that read, "Let's be naughty and save Santa the trip." When I tried to brush if off, I commented to the class, "You can see who the most mature person in my class is..." and Nana again piped up, "It's meeee!"

At lunch with my peers, Mom went into great detail explaining to them about how her therapist thinks she has an inappropriate sexual relationship with me... Though, she was bright enough not to try the addendum about how therefore I must be inappropriate with others.

Like I said, in hindsight the whole thing was pretty funny. The fact that I didn't get fired was a miracle. I figure the kids thought she was so entertaining that they didn't want me to get in trouble and didn't tell. Either way, I was off the hook.

She was supposed to leave on Friday, and she ended up leaving the following Tuesday night. But it wasn't too bad. Like I said, I did in the end have a good time. Most important I got the pictures I wanted of the three of us together.