About you.

Or maybe I shouldn’t have mentionned you at all. In either cases, I should have been more aware!

It started with little innocent comments…

• Who’s that man who commented on your latest Facebook picture?

And I told her it was one of my friends, one she hadn’t met. “Oh…” she replied, and that was it… “Oh…”

Life went on, as it always does, but mom started sending me Messenger notes, thing she had hardly ever done before.

“Hi sweety, hope you’re doing fine in Montréal. Here, things are going smoothly… Btw, are you still talking to that guy, you know?”

That guy? Yeah sure mom, we’re friends, of course we chat every now and then… “Oh…” And I wouldn’t hear about you until the next Messenger notice.

Then I noticed she started writing weird replies to your online comments. And adding crazy smileys… I thought she was being a bit strange, but then again, mom and the Internets had always been a strange mix, so I didn’t mind it too much.

One day, not long after I told her we’d finally meet when I get to Denmark, she asked me if it’d be ok for her to add you in her list of friends… I wasn’t really comfortable with the idea, for some reason, and I told her.

• I’d just be less afraid to know you’ll be meeting with a stranger if I actually knew him too… Is he single?

“No mom, he is happily married and has 2 children with his beloved Danish wife… Don’t you worry about me!”

After that episode, her obsession with a possibly dangerous foreign man meeting with her daughter seemed to dissipate. She didn’t talk about you anymore, didn’t even mention “that guy”, so I thought she had forgotten about you.

Last week end, I went back to Trois-Rivières to spend some time with my family. Mom was a bit strange around me, but I thought it was because of my iminent departure for Denmark. I truly beleived she was just not confortable with my traveling alone… Until…

Late that evening, I found her in the living room, all lights dimmed to the lowest, with my tablet on her lap, tablet I had left on the coffee table, knowing none of my family members were nosy people.

• Mom! What are you doing??

I pulled the tablet away from her, and watched as you were leaving the chat app, just as I sent a message trying to explain that you had been chatting with her, and not myself as usual…

• You told him he was handsome?? Moooom!!!  Now he’s going to think I said that!! He’s my friend… What’s wrong with you??!

Mom appologized but I didn’t know what was more troubling… The fact that I’d have to sort that out with you, or the fact that my mother obviously had a crush on you…

Yeah… I really should have been more aware…