A La Famiglia

Some, and sometimes all, of my family – my siblings, their spouses or significant others, my nieces and nephews and their spouses or significant others, and their children, and even exes and their current spouses or significant others, and their children – has dinner at my mom’s house every Sunday. We’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember. Honestly, for as long as I can remember. It’s just something we do. Happily, the numbers have grown and sadly, the numbers have also dwindled over the years. I haven’t been to a Sunday dinner in seven or eight weeks. I’ve lost count, and I'm not gonna lie, I miss them.

I call my mom every other day or so. It’s just something I do. Typically my conversations with my mom revolve around the weather. She really likes to talk about the weather. It goes something like this: Hello? Hi, mom. Hi, Jan (my mother is the only person on the face of the earth allowed to call me Jan), how ya doin? I’m good, how are you? Pretty good, you got a nice sunny day today? Yep, sure do. How 'bout you? It’s cloudy here today / It’s raining here today / It’s cold here today / It’s nice here today / It’s insert appropriate weather condition here today. Then we talk about everything she can and can’t or could or couldn’t do that day because of said weather conditions and I usually get to hear about yesterday’s and tomorrow’s weather and how that affected or will affect her daily activity, as well. She’s pretty adorable.

Today though, she surprised me! I have a distant cousin who lives in northern California. I don’t think I’ve actually ever met her. She and my mom spoke on the phone recently and mom mentioned to her that I had moved to Los Angeles. My cousin asked if I was going to become a movie star now and my mom could not wait to tell me this story and even launched into it ahead of the weather portion of our call. Unprecedented. When I responded with, “Ha! Not too likely”, my mom said, “Well, you could be an extra, or a producer or something, right?” And I said, “Yeah! I’m gonna be a producer! In fact, I’m gonna do that tomorrow!” She said, “Great! Sounds like fun.” Clearly, she didn’t catch my sarcasm. Or maybe, I missed her sincerity. She is pretty adorable.