Guys That Would Please My Mother

My mother is the kind of mother a daughter doesn't have to hide anything from. She's the kind you sometimes want to think of as a best friend, but you know she's a better parent than that. Because she's the one you tell all your boy problems to, and she's not afraid to always remark, "Why are you settling? You can do better." 

I've always made it a point to my mother that most of my friends are of the XY chromosome pair. Simply because I don't want her to think I'm running a male brothel under her roof. And of all the guys who've walked through our front door, there was one she always favored. He was the closest as a friend can be with someone like me. It wasn't surprising then that I was his backup senior prom date. Except my mother was very much surprised, pleasantly. The next morning, she expressed her opinion on how she thought we made a beautiful pair upon having him pick me up. Since, she hasn't stopped asking why we never went out. To answer he'd say, "Damnnn, Nicole is so much hotter than you."

And then there was the gentleman who never knew my mother. And whom my mother never knew either. Just before leaving the country, I joked with my family that I'd get hitched to a European and stay abroad forever. Part of the amusement was scaring my mother with the fact of marrying out of race. Then, like a pestering reminder that she still existed, I met a [my ethnicity]-European. Though, like myself, he didn't speak the native language of our parent's, it can be obvious to anyone why a mother would approve. He dressed...like a "dad," as the international students there would have said. But most of all, at the time I met him, career-wise, the cards were in his favor. My mother who pushed one of my sister's previous boyfriends back into college and looked down on another sister's boyfriend for not having finished college, would be most pleased with someone who was destined for success. (And coincidentally, as if the world was as small as the annoying Disney Parks' ride lyricizes, this particular European scored a job in the city that houses my home university. More specifically, the suburb where I spend random weekends in my uncle's apartment.)

My mother is the kind of mother that will cry while still giving her blessing when you do something that doesn't please her. A lot of my decisions, and I know most of my decisions from here on out, have made and will make her question her parenting. But every once in a while when I see in someone those attributes that can please her, I like to think just for a minute that I was dating him. So that one day I'd bring home someone she could be proud of. Because she's the kind you want to please, but you know you never will. This is number twenty-four.