It’s funny you know, when you’re growing up, in the home of your mother and your father, who are inevitably the most idiotic, embarrassing and stupid people in the world, you have this idea of yourself. Of who you are. Of who you’re going to be.
That person that you are, that you are going to be is definitely NOT like your parents.
You will never say the things to your children that they said to you. You will never yell. You will never say, “Because I said so,” the most loathed response of parents to a child’s question.
You will do things better, you will do things differently, you will have better, you will have bigger. The dream goes on and on.
And then, and then, real life hits. You become older and become a parent yourself. And your parents get older and become grandparents. You get to watch them play with your own kids in ways that you don’t get to play with them, in ways that they never played with you. Your relationship with your parents, with your mother, is deeper, it’s wider, it’s mutual. You’re on a more level footing. You do some things like your mother, and you start to think, well, maybe it’s okay.
It’s not as important to be different just to be different.
This woman right here, this is my mom.
Right now she is very busy kicking cancer’s ass.
She is doing it with grace, with pomp and with style.
My mom and I have had issues over the past 32 years of my life. I’m sure she’d tell you that I’ve always been strong willed, stubborn, speak my own mind even when maybe I should keep my mouth shut… that kind of thing.
If I were to describe my mom? I would say that she’s strong willed, stubborn, speaks her own mind even when maybe she should keep her mouth shut… that kind of thing.
I have very few pictures of my mom. She is always the one behind the camera, always the one ordering us to smile, to look more natural, turn this way, move that way, stop pinching your sister, “Jamie Dawn Marie!” She would yell.
She drives me crazy when I tell her something and she says, “Been there, done that.” She makes me insane when she lets the hooligans get away with stuff that we as hooligans would never have gotten away with. When I have to “deprogram” them after they’ve been to a sleepover at Gramma’s house.
My mom crochets. She’s left handed. She has blue eyes that none of us girls inherited, but several of her grandchildren did. She was raised in a Catholic church. She was adopted by my grandfather.
She is a wealth of knowledge. She has lived through tough times and has lived to talk about it. She traveled parts of the world while my Grampa was in the Forces. She has canned, lived without hydro for months on end, had the phone cut off, reconnected it, paid off her mortgage, and been working for as long as I can remember.
She is stubborn. She is strong willed. She is kicking cancer’s ass. She will continue to kick cancer’s ass, and she is my hero.
I am thankful for any part of her that I’ve inherited. It’s made me stronger, it’s made me capable. It’s made me who I am.
And I hope that she can be proud of that too.
