This visit was far more pleasant. I decided that I could not approach the situation consumed by my own selfish desire for things to be different. I was going to do my best to make the visit as enjoyable as I could for her. Not in a desperate way, as perhaps I had done in the past, trying to gain approval for myself. Just in a way that would allow me to acknowledge that she is my mother, who spent much of her life taking care of me despite many other far more interesting things she could have been doing.