May Blog Exchange

Friends,

Today is the day for the May Blog exchange! The Blog Exchange is a monthly writing community, managed by Kristen Chase, of Motherhood Uncensored (and many other blogs!), where writers get to stretch their writing muscles... and rant on someone else's blog, for a change.

My guest blogger for today is Heather. I'll be at her place, today.


The meaning of Mother’s Day has changed for me over the years. Whereas once it was a day that I HAD to be nice to my mom (and more often than not, failed) it is now a day that I WANT to be nice to my mom… and honor her.

Because now I have heathens children.

Now I know what it is like.

Let me first state that I have a wonderful mother. She’s a geriatric nurse and she loves what she does. She’s good at what she does and if you ask her why she chose working with older people.. she’ll tell you… “They are just as confused as I am.”

I can also state that my mother is unique.

I’ve heard, over the years, ways that mothers discipline their children. For some, it was a switch. For others, a paddle. For me and my younger brother, it was dishwashing equipment.

Dishwashing equipment?

Yes….

One day my brother and I just wouldn’t stop arguing. I remember it like it was yesterday… She was standing in the kitchen, washing dishes and we were going at it again… she finally turned to us and yelled, “If you two don’t stop it, I’m going to… going to shove this dishwashing equipment down your throat.”

She doesn’t remember saying this. We do. And we told Dad when he got home.

The following Christmas, and every Christmas thereafter, I got “dishwashing equipment” of some sort from my father.

We also felt that we could go to our mother and ask those tough questions. You know… those like “Were you a virgin when you got married?”

There was silence followed by “I wore a white dress.”

“That’s not what I asked,” I said.

“I wore a white dress,” she again replied.

This was where my dad piped in and grinned as he asked me, “Would you buy a car without test driving it first?”

I thought my mother was going to die. Right there. On the couch.

I often told her that she was the meanest mother in the whole world. She’s proud of that title. And when my daughter calls me the meanest mother in the whole world, my mother looks at Samara and says “Oh no. I am the meanest mother. I have worked hard to earn that title and until the day that I die, I will be the meanest mother in the whole world.”

I have big shoes to fill if I’m to take over the title.

As I’ve aged, my mother is a little cooler and not so dumb.

She and my 87-year-old grandmother have become pretty close. They are typically like two unsupervised teenagers when they go out together. The last phone call I got she informed me that they purchased Spring Break 2007 tee-shirts while in Panama City, Florida to wear to the Master Gardner’s meeting upon her return. Shortly before that, she called to inform me that she was now a Sweet Potato Queen, complete with crown.

She tells me that women who wear red shoes don’t wear underwear and old people who wear gold shoes do so only to mask the pee that may run down their leg and into their shoes because of incontinence. Yes, she’s a wealth of knowledge, that mom of mine.

And she still fusses over me just like I’m little all over again. On a recent visit she wanted to know if I slept okay, if I was warm enough, and one evening we sat at the kitchen table and talked for over two hours about anything and everything. I don’t know when we’ve ever done that.

So let me take this moment, right now, to apologize for everything I ever did, said, didn’t do, didn’t say or thought about doing for the past 30 years. I love you, Mom.

Heather Jacobson is a single work at home mom to Matthew (age 10) and Samara (age 7) who is Desperately Seeking Sanity. Read more about her and her quest for sanity at DesparatelySeekingSanity.com