While this blog may speak otherwise, I am a pretty private person, and I do not share the details of my dating life or personal life with my family- basically, at all. They really only become aware of things by accident, snooping, or because I am experiencing some sort of mental break. Because of the sequence of events that took place when I dated Matt, I really wanted to try hard to involve them when I met somebody special the next time around. When I met Daniel, I called my dad after our second date (on the way to a wedding no less) and told him about this great guy I met and how things had been going. My dad was positive, delighted, and we had a great conversation about it. I was pleased at how easy he made it. (I expected otherwise.)
Now about 3 weeks-5 weeks in, depending on when you started counting (first correspondence? Or first date?) I figured mentioning it to my mom in person was probably the way to go. Especially since I really didn't want to do it at all, but since she would be there in person, I should just do it.
I think we went to lunch at Jack's Urban Eats, which is actually a spot Daniel and I loved grabbing take out later on when he was studying a lot at home and didn't really have time for a dinner date out, so I was a little shy about bringing my mom there. Like, I was taking her to a place where I was doing naughty things or something! But anyway, that's where we went, and about halfway through lunch, she rather curiously said, "So what's new with you?" As if she already knew I had been making out and pouring my heart and soul out to this music-crazed, tattooed, rugby playing, motorcycle-riding, man-child already.
And with a deep gulp, I said, "I started dating somebody."
I swear to you on a stack of self help books her eyes bugged so far out of her head she 1.) looked like a Pug and 2.) I thought she was going to choke on her lunch.
It took her a minimum of 60 seconds to somewhat compose herself and I again, swear to you, she looked so rattled it was hard not to laugh. I imitated her entire reaction to every person I possibly could for the next week.
I think after all was said and done after Matt, she never really thought I'd put myself out there again. And she just didn't really see that one coming. Or maybe she just didn't think I'd ever tell her. I don't know.
But she asked the usual questions about his bio, of which I gave a glowing report and she unsuccessful tried to restrain her glee. When I showed her a picture she burst out laughing. She liked his smile but the way the photo was cropped she initially thought he was bald. I dug up a second photo to prove that no, my 27 year old cub maybe-boyfriend did actually have a full head of beautiful brown hair, thank you. She asked me how many times we had gone out and I told her we had seen each other basically every day since we met and again, her reaction was over the top. She was very excited. I was very excited too, but I tempered my responses back to her with a "Well, we'll see what happens." Several times she asked to meet him and THANK GOD is all I can say is that he was out of town. I have this gut instinct she would have pawed him like a hungry tiger, but now in retrospect... nobody close to me got to meet him as my significant other and that's a milestone I missed. Because I was proud of him. I wanted to show off this little (ok, huge, tall, towering giant of a tree-man) darling of mine.
The advantage to that I suppose is, he was all mine for the time I had him. I might not have gotten to show him off, but he was all mine for every second we were together. Regardless of what he believed about possession in relationships. Emily doesn't like to share her very favorite things.
Having my mom there that weekend helped pass the time a little more quickly, as my wedding season had JUST ended, and spending every day with Daniel up to that point, or working left my days glaringly empty except for editing alone at home. I had plenty of that to do, but it was back to the isolating grind, which is something I pretty much detest. Daniel had no reception the entire time he was in Yosemite so we had no contact for almost 5 days, which was pretty much torture and I missed him terribly. Having mom there, tense relationship or not, helped.
The other component to this weekend, which is not really on point to this story, was some family history stuff came up between my mom and I. Not stuff I'm comfortable writing about, but extremely upsetting stuff that I wasn't aware of. Stuff she thought I knew about, but actually didn't, and I ended up having to pull over on the side of the freeway as I drove her to the airport at the end of the weekend to talk about. It was rough and I felt very drained trying to process it. I was anxious for Daniel to come back and for things to get back to normal, and also for my wedding season to TRULY end (editing and all) so I could focus on the job hunt and really use this fancy master's degree I worked so hard to get!
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