I had lunch with my mother on Thursday. Just the two of us. Not a big deal for most guys my age but a huge event for us, since I don’t remember ever doing it before. Literally. Maybe once in college?
My wife and I and my mother have had three sessions with a family therapist in the past 3 months, trying to resolve long-standing issues and learn new ways of dealing with one another. We’ve essentially been estranged from my mom for 12 years.
We seem to be making good progress. Mom’s working hard and doing her therapist-assigned homework. And I’m starting to feel differently towards her. So this lunch was a milestone. We talked politics — I was surprised to find out she’s volunteering for various local political campaigns — and chatted about my work. It was so strange and cool to just have a normal parent-son conversation about every-day stuff — something I tried for years to have with my dad before he died but never achieved. I wonder what the reverberations from this will be?