October 30, 2013
This month, my mother celebrated her 50th birthday.
I didn’t get to see her on her special day, because I live halfway across the country, and don’t have the resources or the time off work to be able to go home to Arizona this calendar year. My sister wants to plan something big to celebrate my mom’s birthday later on, perhaps next summer, when we can all be together.
My mother lives at home with our youngest sister, who is 9. Sometimes I wonder if my mother gets lonely. She tells me stories of how my little sister says, “When I grow up, Mommy, I will never leave you.”
That makes me feel guilty sometimes. I have been away from home for 7 years now, and three years ago when I graduated from college, my mother was ready for me to move back.
I, however, was not.
Most people are in a hurry to move back home; they sense a piece of themselves is always missing until they are back in the familiarity of their hometown. I did not turn out that way. I have actually found myself by moving away, and the staying away part was never a question, really. I never had any desire to move back home.
Part of that had to do with the not-so-fuzzy relationship I had/have with my mother. My mother is a very complicated, broken person. Over the years she has manipulated, emotionally abused, and done her best to try to break me as well. A couple of times she has really succeeded.
But, today isn’t to write about the brokenness; I will save that for another time.
Today is to celebrate the beauty within the brokenness.
You see, I’ve been learning a lot about gratitude and abundance over the past year. I have been learning how to give thanks for the ugly, the seemingly mundane, and the broken.
So I’ve challenged myself to think through the broken pieces of my relationship with my mother, and to identify glimpses of hope within them.
Even though my mother may not have been the best example to me or the best friend I ever had, and even though I still resent that sometimes, I know there are a few things she taught me that are apparent in my character today. Most seem like small, trivial things, but they make me smile, and they make me thankful, and that's the whole point.
1) My handwriting. I always get compliments on my handwriting and how neat it is. This always takes me back to my schoolgirl days when my mother would compare my handwriting to hers (and almost admire mine). She would spend lots of time practicing cursive with me, back in the day.
2) My driving. My mother was the one who played Teacher in most of my lessons. Or, she was in the passenger's seat while I was behind the wheel. During the time that I was learning to drive, she was pregnant with my youngest sister, and the baby doctor she went to was in California, an hour away. I drove her to many of those appointments, and although she was very critical and overly explanatory of each detail that she felt I needed to learn, I know that my driving skills are results of listening to those details and the hours of practice she gave me. I also really, strangely, LOVE to drive long distances. Tell me I get to drive for 6 hours and I jump with excitement. In college, it was never a question of who would be the designated driver--whether there was alcohol involved or not--because everyone knew my obsession with driving. The long-distance driving thing comes from my mom; she basically learned to drive by following my dad on the freeway between Yuma, AZ and Salinas, CA every season for work.
3)Doing Laundry. Now, I know this one sounds sillier than the rest. But from my mother I learned how to wash whites in order to get them radiant!Also, given a choice, I would rather hang clothes on a clothesline outside than use a dryer--another little quirk from my mother.
4)Housecleaning. My mother is a BEAST when it comes to housecleaning. She hates clutter, and takes pride in how well she can clean. We're talking scrubbing tubs and toilets and mopping floors. And ripping blinds down and sticking them in the tub to clean with a broom and soap and water. Not only am I now good at it all, I LOVE to do it. I've got to say, this one definitely comes in handy.
Even though they are small things, and as I look through them, seem almost like little obsessive quirks or complexes, they are my memories and my traits. Perhaps I created these habits in myself, because I was so desperate to have something in common with my mother, to feel like she had taught me or nurtured me in some way, that I convinced myself to develop them. That is a topic for further personal exploration.
For now, I see them as gems of humorous wisdom from my mother's 50 years of life.
Maybe in the next 50 years, I will find more.
*also, the title of this post is in reference to an old song title*
This month, my mother celebrated her 50th birthday.
I didn’t get to see her on her special day, because I live halfway across the country, and don’t have the resources or the time off work to be able to go home to Arizona this calendar year. My sister wants to plan something big to celebrate my mom’s birthday later on, perhaps next summer, when we can all be together.
My mother lives at home with our youngest sister, who is 9. Sometimes I wonder if my mother gets lonely. She tells me stories of how my little sister says, “When I grow up, Mommy, I will never leave you.”
That makes me feel guilty sometimes. I have been away from home for 7 years now, and three years ago when I graduated from college, my mother was ready for me to move back.
I, however, was not.
Most people are in a hurry to move back home; they sense a piece of themselves is always missing until they are back in the familiarity of their hometown. I did not turn out that way. I have actually found myself by moving away, and the staying away part was never a question, really. I never had any desire to move back home.
Part of that had to do with the not-so-fuzzy relationship I had/have with my mother. My mother is a very complicated, broken person. Over the years she has manipulated, emotionally abused, and done her best to try to break me as well. A couple of times she has really succeeded.
But, today isn’t to write about the brokenness; I will save that for another time.
Today is to celebrate the beauty within the brokenness.
You see, I’ve been learning a lot about gratitude and abundance over the past year. I have been learning how to give thanks for the ugly, the seemingly mundane, and the broken.
So I’ve challenged myself to think through the broken pieces of my relationship with my mother, and to identify glimpses of hope within them.
Even though my mother may not have been the best example to me or the best friend I ever had, and even though I still resent that sometimes, I know there are a few things she taught me that are apparent in my character today. Most seem like small, trivial things, but they make me smile, and they make me thankful, and that's the whole point.
1) My handwriting. I always get compliments on my handwriting and how neat it is. This always takes me back to my schoolgirl days when my mother would compare my handwriting to hers (and almost admire mine). She would spend lots of time practicing cursive with me, back in the day.
2) My driving. My mother was the one who played Teacher in most of my lessons. Or, she was in the passenger's seat while I was behind the wheel. During the time that I was learning to drive, she was pregnant with my youngest sister, and the baby doctor she went to was in California, an hour away. I drove her to many of those appointments, and although she was very critical and overly explanatory of each detail that she felt I needed to learn, I know that my driving skills are results of listening to those details and the hours of practice she gave me. I also really, strangely, LOVE to drive long distances. Tell me I get to drive for 6 hours and I jump with excitement. In college, it was never a question of who would be the designated driver--whether there was alcohol involved or not--because everyone knew my obsession with driving. The long-distance driving thing comes from my mom; she basically learned to drive by following my dad on the freeway between Yuma, AZ and Salinas, CA every season for work.
3)Doing Laundry. Now, I know this one sounds sillier than the rest. But from my mother I learned how to wash whites in order to get them radiant!Also, given a choice, I would rather hang clothes on a clothesline outside than use a dryer--another little quirk from my mother.
4)Housecleaning. My mother is a BEAST when it comes to housecleaning. She hates clutter, and takes pride in how well she can clean. We're talking scrubbing tubs and toilets and mopping floors. And ripping blinds down and sticking them in the tub to clean with a broom and soap and water. Not only am I now good at it all, I LOVE to do it. I've got to say, this one definitely comes in handy.
Even though they are small things, and as I look through them, seem almost like little obsessive quirks or complexes, they are my memories and my traits. Perhaps I created these habits in myself, because I was so desperate to have something in common with my mother, to feel like she had taught me or nurtured me in some way, that I convinced myself to develop them. That is a topic for further personal exploration.
For now, I see them as gems of humorous wisdom from my mother's 50 years of life.
Maybe in the next 50 years, I will find more.
