The son shines, whether or not his house does

Entry Number 8,687 in things they never tell you when you have a baby: Some day that baby will grow up and get his own place and you — the mother — will be a houseguest there.
Mother. Houseguest. Mother. Houseguest.
How can one possibly be both those things?
My husband and I recently spent a long weekend with our older son who lives in Denver.
He has a very small two-bedroom apartment and a roommate who was gone for the weekend.
So there we were, three people in about 550 square feet of living space for three days.
The place was very clean, especially for a place that houses two working men.
But … (yes, there’s always that “but,” isn’t there?)
It was Super Bowl Sunday and we decided to make some party food and hang around the apartment to watch the game.
We went to the grocery store and picked up the ingredients we needed. When we got home, I set off for the kitchen to cook and the men watched the pre-game show in the living room.
The kitchen was clean and the countertop was cleared off but the dish-drainer — with its bad design containing a hundred nooks and crannies — was in dire need of some scrubbing.
That was the first dilemma I found myself in: Am I a good mother or a meddling houseguest if I clean it?
Would the chore be appreciated or seen as an insult to his housekeeping?
Well, I cleaned the dish-drainer. And while I was at it, I took everything off the counter and wiped it down.
Ahhh. Now I could cook.
“Thanks for cleaning up,” my son said when he came into the kitchen during a commercial break to check on me.
It sounded sincere enough.
So, I went in the cupboard to get out a pot for the chili and a pan for the cornbread. Well, I found a pot, lots of them actually, but the only thing vaguely resembling a pan was a cookie sheet. Wouldn’t work for making cornbread.
I started a mental list of things I would buy for my son when he was at work the next day.
And that was the second dilemma I found myself in. Was I still supposed to see there were necessary items missing from his cupboard, or should I respect his definition of “necessary”?
Well, I went to the store and bought a square baking pan the next day, along with some dish rags, a serving spoon with no slots — because all he had in his drawer were slotted ones — a garlic press and a couple of other things.
“Thanks for buying all that stuff,” my son said when he got home from work.
It sounded sincere enough.
While I was staying there, I tried to be a good houseguest. I cleared my stuff out of the bathroom when I was done. I reused the bath towel he gave me. I tried to be as unobtrusive as a mother could be.
We really did have a great time.
After three days, we left, my eyes brimming with tears as usual.
I think next time I visit, I’ll try to tell him what I really want to tell him — how proud I am of him. How proud I am that he has managed to make his way in life.
Without cornbread pans and garlic presses and dish rags.
And, of course, the thing I’ll never be able to say.
Without me.