How He Met My Mother

My mom has always told me, "Want to know how a man will treat you? Look at how he treats his momma." Too true. I would add my related new-found wisdom:

Want to know when you've found a great man? He treats your mom just as well as he treats you.

SCL and my mom had only met each other briefly right at the beginning of our relationship when I was finishing up grad school. She'd obviously heard a lot about him from me, but they hadn't had much time together. When my brother surprised my mom with a plane ticket to DC for her birthday, I was excited to see her (it'd been nearly a year!) and even more excited for her to spend time with SCL.

Now, my mom likes to talk. A lot. To anyone. About anything. SCL, on the other hand, is more on the quiet side, so I was concerned about how he might feel having someone talk at him 24/7 for the entire weekend. But he was a great sport and was patient, even when he heard the same story about my nephew for the third time. (By the way, no one thinks your child/grandchild/niece/nephew is as cute as you and some of your immediate family members do.) Each morning he made us all coffee, brought it in on a tray, and sat down with us as my mom talked, resisting the urge to open up his laptop and escape into cyberspace.

The real gem of a moment, though, was when Mom and I decided to go shopping, one of our favorite pastimes. After making a trip to DSW and obtaining some really cute, but very heavy rain boots, we were trying to figure out how we were going to make it through a trip to Nordstrom when we were bogged down by all those bags. I thought, "Hmm...maybe SCL will come get them." Now, he had already dropped us off at the mall earlier and had planned to pick us up later that afternoon. So, we were requesting a third trip to the mall just to pick up our bags. And you know, when I called him, he actually thought it was funny that we'd bought too much stuff to carry. Fifteen minutes later, there he was in the car, ready to unburden us of our shopping weight. He did later confess that he felt a little silly carrying in big DSW bags into the building.

What a great one I've got.