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It makes you think. The kids looking at you like you are some kind of master piece. Soon they will find out that you are just a person. Screwed up like everyone else. We joke that we want to make enough money to be able to afford all the best therapy after we raise them up all wrong. On this day, it makes me think. Will they know how much I love them? What does this day make you think of?
My mother had a very significant influence in who I am. Not always in warm, fuzzy and pleasant ways. I can be hard as a brick when I need to be. I am very thankful for her. I am thankful that she was my mother.
What retrospectives, I wonder, do other mothers have?
Can I give my perspective as a daughter? I remember the epiphany I had when I realized that my mother wasn't always right by virtue of being my mother. When my oldest was small, I tried to do everything like my mother and father did, because they were the authorities who knew how to do everything. One day I realized that my mother was just a person like me. I am the older child, so she was trying her best but had no greater knowledge or insight than I did. I respect my mother and am grateful to her, but from then on I sought my own way.
Its kind of a shock when you realize your mom doesn't know everything. It was for me, anyway.
Can I give my perspective as a daughter? I remember the epiphany I had when I realized that my mother wasn't always right by virtue of being my mother. When my oldest was small, I tried to do everything like my mother and father did, because they were the authorities who knew how to do everything. One day I realized that my mother was just a person like me. I am the older child, so she was trying her best but had no greater knowledge or insight than I did. I respect my mother and am grateful to her, but from then on I sought my own way.
Its kind of a shock when you realize your mom doesn't know everything. It was for me, anyway.
It was for me as well. I will tell my kids that I don't know everything, and they look at me with sincere doubt.
I think having children of my own made me a lot less judgmental of parenting choices my parents made. When I was younger, it was much easier to forget that parents don't stop being human beings, with all of the good and bad that comes with that, just because they become parents. Not to say that my mom doesn't still do things that drive me crazy or that I don't wish they had made some different choices along the way, but taken on the whole, I am going to count myself as fortunate if we do as good a job raising our family (in our own way) as my parents did raising us. To me, having that perspective is priceless.
Last edited by eastwesteastagain; 05-14-2012 at 09:09 AM..
I love my mother. However, as the years pass and I'm raising my own child I realize certain things that recall being a child myself...my mother wasn't the "best" or didn't make the "best" choices for us. But then again...we were driving in the front of the car with no seatbelts and no cushioning on our rusty swing set (nobody seemed to care "back in the day"). So, yes we live in different times.
I choose to analyze and do things my own way. When at a crossroads I may call my mother to see what her thoughts are and try getting things into perspective. Certainly, there are many things you learn from mom but at the same time it's important to have your own judgement on things.
There was a great article I read years ago that rang so true I wish I'd kept it. A mother was remembering how, when she was a kid, her father was in the hospital with a life-threatening illness and they were in danger of being evicted. She remembered how calm and reassuring her mom was and how her mother made her feel that everything was going to be just fine.
Now she was a woman with children of her own, and facing a crisis that was causing her great anxiety. She hid her fears from the kids, but she remembered how her mother acted under stress and wondered why she didn't have that calm serenity that her mother possessed in time of trouble.
Then it hit her--her mother had been faking it all along, just as she was faking it to her own kids.
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or that I don't wish they had made some different choices along the way, but taken on the whole, I am going to count myself as fortunate if we do as good a job raising our family (in our own way) as my parents did raising us. To me, having that perspective is priceless.
