My mother has been worried about my love life for a good ten years now. Since my first girlfriend, I guess. I was only seventeen at the time, and she wanted to meet Anna and find out everything about her beforehand, down to her blood type and her parents’ jobs.
Mom had never really liked my girlfriends. Still, she thought she was the only decent woman in my life. She was the best cook, the best cleaner, the one who knew me best, and no girlfriend could ever reach the same level. In part I agree, because my mother is a very important person to me. But I can’t say that I appreciated my girlfriends any less.
At times, when I was in a relationship, I would lie to my mom about being alone so she wouldn’t ask about my girlfriends. I thought it would only be okay to tell her if I decided to get married. That’s what I did with Veronica. Since we had been dating for a year and a half, had started living together before we got married, and she really wanted to have a baby before she was thirty, we had to hurry up.
Veronica was five years older than me, and she was worried about it herself, but it wasn’t really a problem. So she was older. So what?
But my mother didn’t think so. She used to clutch her heart theatrically when she met Veronica and called her a “future old-timer. In her opinion, it was the man who should be older, and that was within reason. To this day she still protests against Veronica and tries in every way to quarrel with me on this basis. Only my father holds her back, reminding her that this is my life and my happiness. But who can argue with a woman like that? She will never accept a daughter-in-law better than herself, or worse. So what does she expect? That I’ll be a mama’s boy all my life and go out with whoever she chooses?
She already made her choice by marrying her father, and my life is only partly her business. No matter how much she may resent me and Veronica, we are not canceling the wedding, we are not changing our mind about having a baby, and we are not living together either. When I think about the future, I would rather be in a fight with my mother than lose the girl I love.
