My mom and I have gotten to a point in our lives where we are good friends. We talk regularly, we opt to spend vacations together, we greatly respect each other, and I am proud to say she is my mom.
I was a lucky kid. We didn’t have a lot growing up, but we had what we needed. I grew up in the two parent, two kid, dog, cat and fish household of the 70’s. I had a Lite-Brite, Barbies, and loved to do gymnastics. We had two trees in our front yard, a swingset and sandbox in the back yard. My mom was a SAHM and my dad worked his rear off in a uranium mine to support us. Life was good. I played t-ball and then softball in the summers. We skied every winter. We were a busy, active family.
Things did change when my parents divorced about 1984. I didn’t see it coming. I was entering a very selfish phase where I just wondered how it would affect ME. I was twelve when my parents divorced and for those of you with experience with pre-teen girls, you already know this is a time of pure misery. It wasn’t just that my mom saw me as a misery, I was miserable.
Mother daughter relationships are difficult. Simply put. There are days I want a girl so bad, and then the days I think about how awful I was with my mom so often and I hope for a second boy. Boys always love their moms.
My mom and I battled a lot from junior high up through much of college and beyond. Early on, a lot was about my curfew and how strict she was with it. Some about my choice in friends. In one instance I felt that her expectations of me were just so incredibly high. At the other instant I just wanted her to look at me and tell me she cared. That I didn’t ruin her life by ending her teenage years short. I wanted her to love me as much as she did my sister. I wanted her to talk to me on the phone like she did my sister. I wanted that when we talked on the phone, and my sister would call her and call waiting beeped, that she would come back to me, instead of leaving me on hold in favor of my sister every single time.
I have grown up. I am now a mom, soon to be of two, and I wonder how in the world you can ever love your children the same? Each child is of a different personality, and from my own experience in different professional development classes, I have learned that not all styles meld. Fact of life.
My mom and I just really needed to find our friendship. I believe that one of the key contributing factors to finding our friendship was that I moved away. Everyone expected me to be the one that never left Colorado. But I left the state for grad school, which was one of the single hardest things I have ever done. It was also one of the single best things I have ever done. The first few months, I called my mom nearly daily, telling her of every little event in my life. Finally, I cut the strings. I started talking to her once a week on the phone. I started making my own decisions without consulting her. Suddenly, I became a much happier person.
I don’t want to sound like my mom made me miserable! She didn’t. But we were stuck in a rut of parent and child. And I was no longer a child. We had to break out of that in order for me to grow as an adult.
Our friendship has evolved over the past few years into something that is so valuable to me, it is beyond words. I see that my mom has great respect for me, she is proud of what I have done in my life and she likes me. I have tremendous respect for my mom as a hard worker, determined and through thick and thin, she still maintained to my sister and I that we would go to college and make something of our lives. She was the model of a strong female role model. And she is a super grandma!
We like the same things in life, good food, good wine, and having opportunities in life. As much as she still wants to make sure I have everything I need, she has also stepped back and let AB and I live our lives as husband and wife without interdiction.
I think of the little things I will do differently if I am blessed with a daughter. My mom was never into girly girl things. And I WAS (and maybe still am) a girly girl. ;-) There are little things, like taking her to the makeup counter at Macys to get makeovers or shoe shopping or prom dress shopping that I look forward to doing with a daughter. But I cannot for the life of me come up with major things I would do differently than she did.
Thanks Mom!
No comments:
Post a Comment