Go See Mama

Of all the odd things my boyfriend's ex-wife did, the oddest was discouraging him from going to see his mama. If he had told me nothing else about her, this would have convinced me of her general unfitness as a wife.

In my relationship with this same fella, "Go See Your Mama" is a mantra. A motto. A recurring theme. Had a bad day at work? Go see your mama. Feeling stressed? Go see your mama. There's only one thing I can really do for the man that will make him feel any better, and I'm far too busy running the kids all over creation. So his mama is just the ticket, if you ask me.

Besides, if Sweetie wants anything done whatsoever that women knew how to do prior to this century—like having a ripped seam in his pants stitched, for example—he should by all means stop by and ask his mama. I don't stitch pants. I set pants aside to be stitched in the not-so-foreseeable future. I have a mending basket, just for show, filled with items the children outgrew four years ago.

If my man is really hungry, then off to his mama's he goes. I could not cook the way his mama can if you walked into my kitchen with $100 worth of groceries and held a firearm to my head. Her college major was home economics. I studied political philosophy and English literature, which means that I am capable of producing a 20 page, meticulously-footnoted research paper on why, politically speaking, it is neither feasible nor feminist to expect me to cook much of anything. I could produce said paper in far less time than it takes his mama to conjure up a 12-course meal for 20.

She knows from food, his mama. She could teach the Amish a thing or two about laying a spread. My beloved could come to see me today and be lucky to get a slapdash grilled cheese sandwich (burned on one side, because I got distracted reading text messages from my teenagers who are PROHIBITED from having or using their cell phones in school). Of course, since our relationship is fairly new, depending on what I'm wearing, I can pretty much make him forget about food. However, I am well aware that such powers are fleeting, so it's best to get him in the habit now of running off to his mama whenever his stomach is too empty.

His mama is also a wellspring of quiet patience and understanding. I plan to be a wellspring of quiet patience and understanding—a never-tiring listening ear—when the four children currently in my domicile are all living elsewhere. In the meantime, if Dearest wants the full and focused attention of someone who adores him unconditionally, he should (everybody say it with me now) Go See Mama. I will never, never never never, I repeat never, be jealous of his mama. I see her, along with his puppy, as an essential partner in the ongoing enterprise of looking after him and keeping him contented with his life. We have one official worrywort pessimist depressive whiner in this relationship, and that is me. There is simply not room for another, so his constant sunny outlook is of grave concern. His mama approves wholeheartedly of me, and I am always grateful to see him return from his mama's house well stuffed, stitched, and sounding-boarded.

My ex-husband hated his mama with a passion, and she (wisely) lived five and a half states of the U. S. of A. away from him. He was forevermore in my face, talking loudly, wanting something or other. The man couldn't even go to the grocery store by himself and was always nagging me about nonessential chores, like cleaning.

Whenever I heard other women complain of their husbands, "he's such a mama's boy!" my immediate thought was, wow! how do I get one of those?  Unfortunately, my current squeeze developed a long-standing habit of avoiding his mother to avoid his ex's jealous rages, and I am carefully but persistently re-training him. A man simply can't have a close enough relationship with his mother. I get positively alarmed if Sugarpie admits he's gone two whole weeks without running to his mama for something. "Isn't it time," I say, with a fair sprinkling of promised seduction in my voice, "you went to visit your darling mother?"