If we kid, I know that I will refrain from pulling some of the bizarro stunts my mother did. I should preface this by saying that even my mother now acknowledges to some degree that perhaps motherhood wasn't her thing. Truth be told, I think that's 100% true. Don't get me wrong... I did not have a terrible mother. In fact, all things considered, she was/is pretty darn fantastic, but she clearly had NO idea what she was getting into when she opted to kid - and Hayes, her first, really threw her for a loop. He was a troublemaker from day 1 - and that didn't change for about 35 years. She didn't know she was signing up for that, which is why she was relieved to discover that I was a girl. The thought of having two Hayeses may actually have killed her on the spot.
My mother handled virtually everything in rather unique manner. She was prone to what can only be described as stress-induced fits of crazy, that would sometimes include removing entire drawers of objects from dressers and armoires and emptying the contents on the floor because she couldn't find her keys. Our house would look as if it had been ransacked. When you're really young and impressionable, this kind of behavior is scary.
Then there was her impatience. My mother, like most women, is obsessed with shoes. I recall an instance where she took me to a department store, and when I grew restless and bored, and became quite vocal about wanting to leave, she dug her long acrlic nails into my arms to get me to shut up and refrain from embarassing her. Little did I know that one day, I'd be equally as obsessed with shoes, but if we kid, I will never dig my nails into my child's arms. I also won't hit my child, which both of my parents did.
There's a whole laundry list of things I won't do the way she did them, incluing waiting until the last minute to pick up a Halloween costume for my elementary school-aged daughter, and bringing home two rather humiliating options: A rubber banana mask and a rubber humpty dumpty mask. Thanks Mom. Dressing up as a banana that year was excruciating. Mind you - my mother constantly noted the fact that she was not a typical mom... not the kind who baked brownies for the bake sale, not the kind who threw on jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers and jumped into her station wagon to cart us off to soccer practice. She was a crazy, neurotic, super-talented artist type. This is precisely why I would've expected a better costume. Perhaps that's why I was so charmed by my husband's masterful creation of our Incredibles costumes during our first Halloween together... but I digress.
My mom also opted to wash my mouth out with soap. I know some parents still do this - and I'm simply not a fan. It's gross, it's kinda cruel, and it doesn't work... or at least it didn't work on me. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I swear like a truck driver, and I'm proud of it.
The primary thing that I will not do should we kid, is utilize my child as my personal therapist. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have been providing my mother with sage and sound advice for at least 21 years. She has never really heeded a word of it - and we have the same conversations over and over again - year in and year out. My mother obsesses over things that anger her to such an unhealthy extent that I often find myself pitying her. It's kinda maddening.
Like I said though - she was a pretty fantastic mom. She always knew what to say when I was devastated by something, (mean girls at school, the boy who didn't like me back, bombing an audition for musical theater - you name it). She hated to see my upset by anything - and I always knew she loved me to pieces. It's also been pretty rad to have such a creative mom, who has inspired my own creativity repeatedly. And of course, despite the fact that in hindsight she kinda thinks she shouldn't have had kids - I know that she adores and loves us both and doesn't reget the way things turned out. To her credit - she also went through numerous types of personal hell. She was diagnosed with an incurable and debilitating disease when Hayes and I were very young that has prevented her from doing a ton of things she'd have loved to do. She was led to believe that her son might be dead on at least two occasions. She has a mother who, well... to be completely honest, was mostly terrible - and don't get me started on her father.
So sure, she wasn't perfect, (who is???) but at the end of the day, I wouldn't have traded her for anything. I just won't do things precisely the way that she did. In the meantime, I'm praying that she never reads this. Fortunately, she doesn't know how to use a computer, (not kidding), so I'm probably safe.
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