Mom, visiting

My mother is in the country for a couple of weeks: time here in New York to see me, her sisters, and a friend or two; a few days in Nevada with the other sister; and then off to Texas to see my brother next weekend.

I invited her to come uptown and visit me and cattitude last weekend, rather than me going downtown to my aunt's (where Mom was staying) or meeting somewhere else, which might have been interesting but maximally tiring since everyone would have had to travel. We sat and drank tea and talked for a few hours. Somewhere in there, Cattitude started a pot of chicken soup, but that was for a late dinner and wouldn't really have stretched to three people (even if the main goal hadn't been to freeze most of it to use as an ingredient later).

I realized afterwards that I was feeling stressed, and had to stop and think about why. We had talked about a variety of somewhat stressful topics (including various people's health, and the 9/11 attacks, that prompted by Mom reasonably asking what we thought of having one of the Guantanamo detainees tried here in the city). And I was worried about baldanders (who is doing somewhat better, by report). They're topics that I would probably have found stressful no matter who I was talking to, not stressful because it's my mother.

Homemade chicken soup is restorative.