Out With The Old...In With The New.

The annual girls only weekend has come and gone. Every year in August my three daughters, my mother, and myself pack a few bags (my mother packs one too many) and head out to the quaint and quiet town of Rockport, Texas. These trips are always so much fun once we actually get there and get situated. But there is an inevitability that is inherent in these types of gatherings...a clash of the Titans...an overthrow of the old regime.

Five years ago, when I blithely imagined the wonderful memories we would create and accumulate (and we truly have created quite a few), it never once crossed my mind that I would (several times a day over the entire weekend) want to strangle my mother. I love the woman, I'd take a bullet for her, but she drives me bonkers from the moment she arrives at my house at the start of the trip (with way too many bags for a two night stay) until the moment we get back to my home and start unloading our bags (much too slowly in her opinion, and boy is that woman opinionated): what time we should get up, what groceries we should buy, where she wants to go shopping, who should get in the shower first, how my daughters should have their boyfriends on lock, what kind of boys my girls should date (geeks, they'll make big bucks one day), how I drive too slow, how I drive too fast, well; you get the picture. I guess she can't help it...she's been the one in control for a very long time but now I find that I am slowly but surely wresting that control from her, and let me tell you...she's not liking it one bit because if looks could kill...I'd be six feet under.

Our first morning together was a defining moment. There we were, the first borns of three generations, stuffed in the galley-sized kitchen trying to get breakfast made for five bodies. Too many Titans in the kitchen but no one recognized that little fact or if anyone did well we just weren't about to relinquish control. So we bumped into each other, stirred each others pots and generally went about our breakfast-making business. Now, the night before, as we shopped for groceries, my oldest daughter let us know that she would make breakfast in the morning. I was pleasantly surprised and thought I would enjoy having her cook for us but Grandma had plans too. She wanted sausage with her eggs and by golly we were going to have sausage and eggs for breakfast come hell or high water. So there went my daughter's plans for whatever recipe she had had in mind. The old regime had asserted itself and won. But then, as we all sat around the table eating the grease-laden meal, the woman actually began looking at her watch and she uttered the words that swung the pendulum the other way, "You girls need to start getting in the shower, it's getting late and y'all know how long it takes y'all to get ready. It doesn't take me long but you girls (this includes 47 year old me) take forever and the whole day'll be gone before we've had a chance to get in the ocean!" It was 8:30 in the AM and it was at this precise moment that the new regime rebelled. Slack-jawed and gape-eyed, she listened as I interjected my own edict: "We are not about to start rushing around. We want to relax; there's no reason to be anywhere at any particular time. We'll get there when we get there." Silence. I watched. All held their collective breaths but no thunerbolts were flung. The elder, quieted and supplanted, closed her mouth, picked up her fork, and continued to eat. And it was over, just like that. As we all resumed eating and talking and making merry... I realized as I looked around the table, this would happen to me before too long...in fact, in small ways and at various times and situations it has already begun.