"Mom"

Hey loyal blog-readers! Sorry I've been adequately absent as of late. I have had minimal time to blog, and even right now, I am multi-tasking. I can only imagine the glory of this entry while I create a personalized calendar for my grandmother, making our wedding photo album (leather-bound of course!) and figure out Christmas presents for my closest relatives. Oh. And blogging.

This week was really quite lovely. We flew out to Austin Wednesday night (pretty late. We didn't get to David's parents' house until 11:30 p.m.) We stayed with his parents all the nights and had lots of fun. We started Thanksgiving morning cooking like fiends. I made my green bean casserole. I was going to make my sweet potato casserole also, but David took that initiative. Let's just put it this way: Next year, I will cook the sweet potato casserole also.

The meal was pleasant and hanging out with his family was marvelous. His (paternal) grandmother was in town and it was marvelous to see her. Or as she would say: "it was GRAND to see..." Having her there made me really aware of something, and I'm curious of your opinions.

David's mom calls his father's mother "Mom." I don't know why this alarms me. Maybe it's because I always see those movie scenes where the unwanted soon-to-be son-in-law is brought home by the daughter, just for the parents to find out that they are already engaged and, suddenly, the soon-to-be son-in-law calls the father "Dad." It's so jarring and there's absolutely no reason for me to feel this way. Then, I delved deeper.

I love my parents. I can't imagine calling two men in my life "Dad" or two women in my life "Mom." I had trouble enough calling David's parents by their first name instead of Mr. and Mrs Schexnayder. Maybe it's the Southern girl in me. This is, obviously, a weird personal problem of mine. I mean, David's mother is not doing anything wrong. Heck, it's her right to call her mother-in-law whatever she wants. David told me that he thinks his mother didn't always call his grandmother "Mom." According to this memory, her own mother had, sadly, passed away and that's when she started calling her "Mom." I can't imagine changing my moniker for my mother-in-law after the death of my family, but I think I understand it after that type of incident. I think this is the amazing part of getting involved with other people's families. You encounter all sorts of different rituals, traditions and even names. I certainly do not have any actual issue with her calling her "Mom." It most certainly does not offend me. I'm just trying to dissect why it jolts me so when she says it.

So, what do you call your significant other's parents? What do you think about calling your significant other's parents Mom and Dad? Am I just crazy for thinking this is an interesting case study and possibly a good cross-section of a generational change?