On Saturday my mother's first cousin and her husband came to Denver from Wyoming. Cousin brought photographs and I produced the one of my mother at 4, which hangs right next to the wedding collage she spotted on my wall, which led to the wedding video (apropos, because Friday was our 10th anniversary), which led to the wedding album, which led, as a reward for looking at all that (she said she wanted to! and my mother had never seen either album or video), to my showing them the Glamour Shots, which remain as hideous as I remember.
Was it years of baggage with my mother or a real difference between them that made Cousin's similar generational tics easier to accept or volley than my mother's? The men--my stepfather BDL, the cousin's husband, and RDC--conversed, but Cousband better with either than BDL and RDC with each other. RDC and Cousband could talk about travel and fly-fishing and current events like eminent domain, and Cousband and BDL could discuss the Way Things Used to Be, but, RDC reported and I can easily believe, when Cousband and RDC spoke of something not of immediate interest to BDL, he would begin to make puerile jokes. BDL's idea of a current event was whether the young blonde woman who disappeared in Aruba (where darker skinned people live) had been found yet.
Overall the whole visit was fine. I could feel my mother restraining herself and I know I restrained myself. About the table she said that I did not do a good job, but it's my table to do with as I want, "or at least so you always say." I did not point out that I have asserted my ownership only once, when she wanted it back during its tenure as my dining table.
I had made reservations at a neighborhood restaurant on Friday night, asking for the patio please because it was our tenth wedding anniversary. After we placed our drink orders, our server told us that another table was treating us to an appetizer for our anniversary, and when we looked over to that table it was Scarf and Drums. I asked the server to give them a round of drinks in return, and I am really pleased that the Happy Couple did not protest: I did not know, when I made that request, that the HC had told RDC before we left the house that dinner would be their treat.
They had already met Scarf and Drums the night they arrived. I needed to deliver my contribution to the baby gift to Scarf and asked my mother to come with me to meet some of my neighborhood friends, since they live just around the corner, and RDC suggested we all go and stroll through the park afterward. Hanging out on Scarf's porch were she and Drums and some other bookgroup people and another neighbor I hadn't met before. There were introductions and a little chat and we walked on, very slowly even though my mother said neither the altitude nor her foot troubled her. BDL teased her for walking with her hands in her trouser pockets. His teasing was about how her hands couldn't quickly balance any stumble or break any fall; I said nothing because it always has looked an uncomfortable physical pose and to me belies emotional discomfort as well.
Also we met another bookgroup member and her husband, walking their three dogs and carrying a cat! in a cat-carrier! like a baby-carrier! I totally have to get that for my sister. Despite the wonderful view of Denver from behind the museum, and the wonderful rose bushes that are remnants of the first planting of the Botanic Gardens before it occupied its current space, and the lake at sunset with geese and goslings, my mother kept asking where we were going and why. I had asked her about altitude and her foot (she had a bone spur a few years ago) to know whether a walk would be okay, and we covered less than a half mile altogether, but she doesn't use anything but a car for transportation so this was pointless to her.
Back on the hospitality front, I had also made reservations for tea at the Brown Palace. Granted this is a Girl thing and it best follows a tour of the Molly Brown House, but I could do nothing else with BDL than bring him. I should have told them that tea is a meal and not assumed that that was obvious by my saying "I made a reservation for tea" instead of "we're going out for a cup of tea." Also I should not have assumed that their being in the city would have altered their wardrobe. BDL wore a promotional t-shirt, but at least he took off his cap when he went indoors. I should have asked the restaurant to mask the prices on the menus, or clarified that this was my treat because she asked the server how much was just a cup of tea. At that point I said it was a meal, not a drink, and it was a special occasion kind of treat, and my treat to boot. The same thing happened with the Pike's Peak train. I told them that I expected to pay for all the reservations I made, and please try to accept hospitatlity as the gift it is instead of as a burden or debt.
She seemed to like the house, which made me happy. There was no snapping on either side and criticism only of the masked sort that she seems no more able to rein in than I can stop my eye-rolling. I am not sure she liked RDC's cooking, protesting that we shouldn't take any trouble, instead of accepting that we were making an effort for our guests' pleasure, not for their guilt, in order that they should enjoy good food, a scrupulously clean house, flowers, and having their tea and coffee refilled chairside with the morning paper.
They both liked Blake at first, but on the strength of his initial curiosity about them, they both later overstepped his boundaries and tried to pick him up or pet him when he was deep in a preen, was eating, or otherwise would have appreciated some notice before a strange hand invaded his space and person. He bared his beak at them, indicating pretty clearly to leave him alone, but they didn't pay attention to my telling them as well to back off, and continued attempts occasionally got them beaked, at which point they decided he is spoiled. Which he is, but not because he fends off unwanted mauling.
The house and Blake, maybe; Denver, not so much. Denver, especially Colfax Avenue, made my mother's teeth itch. She kept finding ticks that would turn out to be a flake of scab or bit of dirt, and would not just take my word that Denver has no deer ticks, and what ticks Colorado has are in the mountains or at most the foothills. Also she identified a plant in my neighbor's easement as poison ivy, when Colorado doesn't have any anyway and my neighbor is a scrupulous gardener.