Cookin' with My Momma, Maybe?

"Bro, Dad, you can lean on me."
"That's my son."

In "Arm Wrestling with My Father", Manning conveys that there is more than one way to communicate with your parents. His father doesn't go to his orchestra concerts, but is more than willing to go to his lacrosse games and help him; arm wrestling becomes a favorite pastime, a symbol of their unspoken love. Their confrontation and role reversal occurs when Manning defeats his father in an arm wrestling match, but Manning doesn't want to overturn his father's strength and carry his father, who has gotten weaker and older. Manning's relationship with his father is very physical, and his father only softens at the very end when he realizes that his son has grown up and that he must lean on him. He understands that his father didn't need to tell him that he loves him. It is implied and strengthened through years of physical contact. 

Some parents are very expressive, while other parents are not so much. My parents, especially my Mom, fall in with the latter. [Now to pick on my Mom, who I like to pick on a lot just for fun, hehe.] While we like to chat with each other over funny news or bad gossip about celebrities' surgery gone wrong, I don't really recall her ever expressing her love for me verbally. She also never comes to my concerts or events in general (okay, I admit that maybe she comes during the last few minutes to wait for me to finish, but she also forgot to pick me up once and left me in the freezing cold), and takes a more passive stance in my life. But I can tell she loves me because she reads me news articles on how to improve my life, she comforts me in my perpetual failure, and she is confident that I will do well. I've realized now that a person can throw 'I love you' around and not really mean it, so maybe my Mom was wise to show it in other ways; I've also taken a long time to realize that the only reason why my Mom tolerates house chores is so that I have more time to study and become greater than her (maybe). Like Manning, I still want my Mom to take care of me and tell me that everything will be fine, and maybe I'm not ready to grow up yet. I haven't had the role reversal that Manning has, and probably will in some far-off-day-that-I'm-not-looking-forward-to, but I admire my Mom's steely strength and I've been able to understand and appreciate her a lot better. :)