...which, to be perfectly honest, is not a goal i wanted to achieve had you asked me twenty years ago. but the story has a happy ending, so for my mom who will undoubtedly read this: don't panic.
i was not a person my parents liked. to them i was sour and negative. i was argumentative and stubborn. (all true.) i still struggle with that, because i was a good kid. i mean REALLY good. i never once, not my entire life, had to stay after school for detention. i was never tardy. i never smoked or had friends who did. i never snuck (yes, i know it's not a word, but i like it!) out of the house. i never even considered it. my parents had a good-sized bar in our house, and i was not tempted even one time to have a little sip and refill with water. i could not tell you what marijuana smelled like, and to this day if you're smoking a pipe (not the crack kind silly, the tobacco kind) :) the two smells are completely the same to me.
people trusted me to keep their children when i was in the sixth grade. i had a regular babysitting job with a nice family every single saturday night, from the time i was a freshman through my senior year in high school. **no snickering. a looker i was not, and they were certainly not lined up. okay, so i did have a date to the prom one year. it was monumental.
i was the one in class that everyone talked to, had no enemies, yet was never invited to the cool kid parties. people copied my homework every single day, and i let them because i was a genuinely nice person and from my perspective, it wasn't cheating. i brought teachers suck-up gifts every chance i got. they loved me.
i had a couple of close girlfriends and i was content. but not really.
my family was SO nuclear. my mom literally baked four googillion cookies during my junior high and high school days. my dad worked for the same organization his entire working life. they were always financially and emotionally stable. my sisters were stars in their own ways; i had a cute, bubbly, fun little sister whom everyone adored, and of whom i was immensely jealous for many years. my ultra-intelligent older sister was a musical prodigy and had clear direction and purpose and no time for any deviation of that plan.
i always felt i was born into the wrong family. i seriously had (have) no talents or gifts to offer other than my wonderful self. my parents, by my own perception, treated me far differently than my sisters. i truly believe that birth order is everything, and that middle child syndrome exists, and that parents--without intending to-- can and do choose favorites. (now you know the real reason why i only have two children. no middles!) i felt the standards were different for me and i would never measure up. i was a good kid elsewhere, but i spent my whole life in trouble at home. i was so stubborn. (still am.) i didn't GET my parents, and they didn't get me. my ideas of the world and how it should work were unformulated at that time, yet i felt i needed to be argumentative just to show i had gumption. i would not give respect unless it was shown to me, which turned out to be the precise attitude i struggled to overcome with my own high schoolers once i became a teacher. i knew everything, yet nothing. we were a strange combination, my family and me, always.
and, my senior year, i was desperate to leave. i honestly didn't care where i went to college, so long as i was far, far away from The House. i hung a homemade paper calendar on my door with a countdown to how many days till i left the house. my mother didn't make me take it down because she wanted me to go as badly as i did. how terrible on both our parts.
and i went away. and i stayed away. and, to everyone's surprise, i flourished and grew my own ideas this time, and i did okay. i made mistakes, not terrible ones, but enough to learn how i wanted my life to work. i knew how to do it because somewhere in those long weekends of being on lockdown in my room for refusing to do SOMETHING, i had to make a decision whether or not to take my pent-up anger and use it for something good or something not-so-good.
and i got married. i married someone my parents didn't initially think was so good for me. i didn't care; i knew they would change their minds, and they did.
and then, i had kids. and boy oh boy, does that change things. i am literally my mother done over again. i have the same ideas on child-rearing. the words that come out of my mouth are precisely the words she barraged me with forEVER and yet they seem so appropriate to say now. i have different views than most people i know on how i want my children raised, and all of that comes from her. she was there at every critical moment and i never even noticed. she never let me want for anything (except trying out for cheerleading; something i'll never forget!) and i bet i never thanked her. i don't remember a time us telling each other that we loved one another until i was an adult. how wrong of me to be so selfish.
and, turning the corner to another mother's day, my sixth one and my mother's 36th, i am so grateful that she raised me to be who i am today. had it been easy for me then, no doubt i'd be having a hard time now.
and i'm not. i'm okay. i'm more than okay. i'm perfect.
and, for that, i'm thankful.
happy mother's day to mine, and to you and yours.
