Mother and Child Reunion

Like the Olympics, the Fifth Annual Midwinter Mom Visit is winding down. Unlike the Nagano Games, however, we’ve had no spectacular mishaps, heartbreaks or tape-delays.

We go on, live, every day. Rain or shine.

We take pride in knowing that not every mother and son could do this. It’s one thing for parent and child to talk on the phone once a week, or every day. But for a guy in his late 40s and his mother to live under one roof for five weeks?

It just ain’t natural, is it?

If it is, how come friends wince every year when I tell them Mom is coming out. “You’re putting up your mother for how long?” one said. Another asked, “Whatever happened to the four-day rule for relatives?” No doubt, Mom’s friends in Denver asked her the same things.

It’s a tradition that began the year after my father died. At first, it was holiday-season balm for Mom. Now, it’s just her and me hanging out together, each amazed at how five years can flash by like a downhill racer.

Odd to say for flesh-and-blood, but we come from such different life experiences. She was married with children from the time she was 19. Over a lifetime, she learned to give and take, make plans for the group, sacrifice. Only in the last five years has she learned what it’s like to live alone and not hear another voice at home for hours on end.

I come from the other side of the cosmos. Married for four years and then single again for nearly 20, I seldom worry about plans or sacrificing anything. I don’t consult about what movie to see, where to eat, what vacation to take, or what time to wake up in the morning. Another person talking sometimes sounds to me like a raging din. Silence is more than golden.

Into that odd little world comes my mother. You’d think our worlds might collide, each a helpless product of our environment.

Somehow, they don’t.

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A big reason is that on the Nagging Scale of 1 to 10, she’s a 1. OK, a 1.5, but that’s only because she found out about cholesterol a few years back and how it could affect her poor little boy’s long-range health.

As for what I bring to the table . . . well, in all modesty, what mother wouldn’t love to have a world-class brooder for a son?

So, it works between us. Even if, while playing golf together, I look over and notice that she’s raking the bunker as perfectly as she cleans the kitchen table. “It’s just a sand trap, Mom. We’re not going to eat off of it.”

Some moms would take offense. She laughs.

I rebel early in her visit at the nibbling away of my precious freedom, but at the risk of sounding like I’m maturing, I eventually come around. I accept that her asking early in the day, “What do you want for dinner?” is not an invasion of my innermost thoughts but what normal people refer to as planning ahead.

I wonder why I had to inherit patience from my father, which is to say none, rather than from her. When we discovered a flat tire as we were about to return home from a Palm Springs weekend, I steamed up immediately. Her response was, “You could look at it as being lucky that it didn’t happen out on the highway.”

“Yeah,” I growled. “This is my lucky day.”

Sensing I was about to blow a head gasket in the tire store, she went for a walk, as if to say, “I assume you’ll be acting like an adult by the time I get back.”

That’s the double whammy she pulls on me. Half the time, she reminds me how lucky I am to be her little boy. The other half, she’s making me feel embarrassed for being so juvenile.

With eight days to go, we’re at what I consider the best stage of the visit. We’ve each staked out our turf, learned how far we can nudge or bug the other, and embraced cohabitation. I grudgingly concede privately that total freedom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and (I hope) she realizes I’m not going to drink that crummy 1% milk, so there’s no point in trying to persuade me.

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In the end, I will forgive her for not wanting to watch a Motown special on TV (“It’s history, Mother!”), and she will forgive me for wanting white bread instead of whole wheat (“You’ve got to get more fiber into your diet”).

We forgive because we know that, while neither Motown nor wheat bread will ever unite us, everything that matters does.

We know we’re a couple of ordinary people who got that special blessing that too many others don’t: a mother and son who love and appreciate each other.

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Columnist Al Martinez is ill

Dana Parsons is a columnist in The Times’ Orange County edition. His e-mail address is dana.parsons@latimes.com