I am always saying the wrong thing. Ask my kids. They'll tell you.
I open my mouth to say something I am sure is funny or interesting or worth remembering, but it never comes out that way. I can tell by the looks on their faces.
I am particularly adept at saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. And holidays present the perfect opportunity for me to say the wrong thing at absolutely the wrong time — the time when everybody's already feeling irritable, the time when the air is already charged with emotion.
For the first time in several years, my kids and their spouses will all be with me for Christmas. What better time for me to say something stupid?
Fortunately, there is some guidance for those of us who don't know when to keep our mouths shut.
Linda Bernstein, who writes for the Boomer Web site Next Avenue — often about relationships between parents and their adult children — recently published a list of six things you shouldn't say to your grown-up kids.
My first reaction was, "Only six?" I can say a dozen before I have had coffee.
Better still, she offers benign comments we can make instead. Get out the index cards, fellow mothers.
Some of the comments she advises against are in the Motherhood Hall of Fame.
"Have you gained weight?" "When are you getting married?" And "Is that a zit?"
It is never smart to talk about weight with anyone. If they decide to get married they will probably tell you sometime before the wedding. And she knows she has a zit. Those are the times when it is best to say nothing at all.
Don't bad-mouth an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend, Ms. Bernstein writes. They will remember what you said when they get back together. Don't comment on how messy their apartment is. (And I would add, don't volunteer to help clean. They will know what you really mean.)
But the comment that is always at the tip of my tongue is, "How come you hardly ever call?"
"I've found that parents and their adult children define 'hardly ever call' quite differently," she writes.
"I know that when my son's number hasn't shown up on my caller ID for three or four days, I begin to worry — unnecessarily, of course. These phone silences have more to do with what's going on in his life than how he feels about me."
That's the key, I think. Unless you don't get along at all, the time between phone calls probably has nothing to do with how your children feel about you. It isn't a testament to the quality of your relationship. They aren't trying to deliberately hurt you, using phone silence as a weapon. Sometimes they are just busy.
She points to research that shows that parents are more easily wounded by these slights than their children because we are so much more emotionally invested in the relationship than they are. That hurts, too. To think that we don't matter all that much to someone who is the world to us.
"It's easy to forget that he's a separate person with his own life," Ms. Bernstein writes of her son. "So every morning I repeat this mantra: 'Today my kids may feel no need to talk to me.'
"When they do call," she says, "engage, don't nag."
This Christmas I pledge to zip it and smile vaguely. No prying questions, no pronouncements, no needy requests for more contact.
I am just going to hand my adult children a copy of another article Linda Bernstein wrote for Next Avenue.
"8 Things Not to Say to Your Aging Parents."
Susan Reimer's column appears on Mondays and Thursdays. She can be reached at sreimer@baltsun.com and @SusanReimer on Twitter.com.