Who Am I? or Who Are My Selves When Mixed All Together?

Sorry I've not been around. My mother has been in town. It's actually been quite a good visit. It's helpful that she has come alone. It's much easier to relax when it's just her and not her and her husband. At dinner last night (she took me out for a fantastic steak dinner with crab cake apps topped off with a really yummy Shiraz to bring to an end a full day of museums and knick knack shopping) she mentioned that she enjoyed our time alone together because she could recognize me best on a one on one level. I was her daughter during those times. When at home, she saw that I became (also) a wife and mother. Interesting eh? My self as an individual doesn't even really register on the radar. At the same time, I am guilty of the same. I recognize her as my mother when she visits alone. When she comes with D, she is his wife as well (and D is then not just my dad but her husband). As more people enter the equation replete with their own labels and self/imposed definitions of selves, the time spent sifting through the chafe to get to the actual wheat becomes an involved and exhausting process. No wonder family events such as holiday meals, reunions and the like are met with giddy excitement oft times bordering on the hysterical. The measurement of error becomes too difficult to calculate with anything but uncertainty (yup. I have an older brother working on completing his Masters in Physics--and I love taking his 'serious science' and bastardizing it for my own literary allusions).