I spend a lot of time thinking about my parenting, and how my parents raised me. I often wonder if my mom watches over us, and is proud of the job I am doing as a mother. I don't know if most mothers feel this way, or if I do because I lost my mom when I was pretty young, but making lasting memories with Emily is so important to me, just in case one day I am not around for as much as her life as I should be.
Growing up, and still to this day, I was very close to my dad. We are very much alike, we agree on a lot of the same things, we have a similar personality and interests. Even as a young kid, my dad was just easier to be around. My mom expected a lot. She wanted me to be girly and frilly....maybe I wouldn't have wanted to be anyway, but I distinctly remember not wanting to be girly for the sheer reason that she tried so hard to make me that way. She was pretty hard on me...not in the punishment sense, I wasn't punished much at all as a kid, and really didn't even have a ton of responsibilities. But my mom put a lot of pressure on me. I was a good kid, I didn't get into much if any trouble at school, I got good, to very good grades, I had nice friends who weren't "bad influences", I didn't do drugs, or drink (much, we all experiment some), when I had sex for the first time it was something I thought long and hard about, resisted many instances of temptation so that my first time could be with someone I truly loved and was in a relationship with, and I even took the step of getting on birth control a few months before.
But none of that mattered to my mom. It didn't matter that I didn't drink or do drugs, my room was a mess, so I was a bad kid. Who cares that at 18, I got myself to the doctor and got myself on birth control, but I had sex before marriage, so bad bad bad. Don't get me wrong, I loved my mom, I still do and I miss her so much. But she set a very high bar for me that almost no kid could reach. But she did, so she expected me to. She was expected to reach that bar when she was young, and she apparently did, so no matter what I did, I would never be a great kid or a well-behaved kid or a responsible young lady because I didn't reach that bar.
My dad on the other hand, he just let me be. If I wanted to wear a dress, that's great. If I wanted to wear jeans and a tshirt, that's cool too. If I got a C in a class that I really struggled in, he was happy. If I skipped school, well, it was one time, no sense in making a mountain out of a molehill. I have no idea what he was thinking when my mom told him she "found" my birth control pills (scrunched up in a paper bag, at the bottom of my garbage can)....surely as a parent, no one is excited to hear this. After having two babies and married for 6 years, I am sure my dad would still happily like to believe that I am still a virgin. But he lived in the real world, he knew it was bound to happen, and at least I was in a committed relationship and I took steps to protect myself. There isn't much more a dad can hope for when it comes to their daughter having sex.
But, despite all that, when I was hurt, or sad, or didn't feel well, all I wanted in the world was my mommy. She had this amazing ability of making everything ok by just taking me in her arms and hugging me. I probably didn't paint a good picture of it above (my mom and I had a tumultuous relationship) but if I had to look back, especially during my childhood, and use one word to describe my mom, it would be nurturing. I want to be that for Emily. I want to be her safe haven, her comfy place, her place that she wants to be, no matter how old she is, when she just needs to be loved.
Although at the same time, I want to kick her ass and help her be the person I know she can be, which was my dad. It's funny because in some ways, he was so "whatever, that's not a big deal, kids will be kids" but at the same time, he pushed me to do things I was scared of, so I wasn't scared anymore. When he taught me how to drive, he used to push my leg down on the gas when I pulled out into traffic if I wasn't going fast enough. He would force me to try things I didn't want to do, at least once, no matter how much I cried and screamed and pleaded with him not to make me do it. He wanted me to try being an Acolyte at church. I was very shy, I wanted nothing to do with it, I begged and pleaded, he didn't move an inch. I tried it, and loved it. The summer I turned 16, he told me I had to get a job. I didn't want one, I was nervous, but he made me do it....I ended up loving my job, had a blast that summer, met a lot of great friends, and even met my first boyfriend there.
And then my mom, who was so hard on me with other things, was the one who would say it's ok, if you don't want to do that, you don't have to. I had a really stressful semester in college one year, and a lot of personal crap weighing on me too. I hated this one class, I wanted to drop it for no other reason than it was too much work and I was dreading the presentation we had to give at the end of the semester. My dad's advice....you have to take the class sometime, you've already put X amount of weeks in, might as well keep pushing through. My mom's advice....if you're that stressed out about it, maybe it's better to just drop it.
So I really hope that I can be all of those things for Emily. I mean, I don't want to set the bar so high that she is being set up to fail, but I want to be both the person she comes to for nurturing and comfort, and the person that doesn't let her get away with shit and push her to her potential. I have no idea if I am succeeding so far, but I think I am a pretty good balance of the two.
A lot of mornings, she watches cartoons and eats breakfast while I try to wake up, and browse facebook and timehop. Some days I am much more open to her "playing bubbles" (meaning, watch kids youtube vidoes) on my phone, because it means she sits on my lap while she watches. I just love having her warm little body close to mine, sitting and snuggling without a care in the world. I usually sit in the recliner, so my feet are hanging out right at about her waist level. When she plays or watches tv, she's often on the move, occasionally stopping to watch something....and she'll stand there and play with my feet. She'll either just stand there and hold my foot, or grab onto some toes. It sounds weird, and my husband thinks it is gross, but I just love it. I love that when she is near me, she has to be touching me and close to me in some way, even if it is just my stinky feet. I love it and I cherish it, because I know there will come a day when she no longer wants to be within an arm's length of me, and probably won't even want to talk to me or look at me. I hope we can defy the odds, I hope we can be the mother/daughter pair that can survive the tween/teenage years with our sanity mostly intact, especially because my mom and I did not. But even if we don't, I will cherish these moments, and at least have the memories of them when they stop.
With the holidays approaching, I am all about making memories and starting family traditions. My husband got a reciprocating saw last year, and has been using it quite a bit lately. One night he was out cutting some wood for a project, and it was starting to get dark out. It instantly brought me back to the nights when I was a kid, and as it was getting dark out, and my mom was in the kitchen making dinner, my dad would be outside working....either cutting things on his table saw, or using a chainsaw to cut up wood for the wood stove. Everyone always complains when time change happens and it gets dark out so early, but for me, when it's cold outside and your in the house, nice and warm, I love that it gets dark early. I guess it just brings back good memories for me.
We're embarking on our third annual outing for our Christmas tree tomorrow night. Since we've been together, we've done several different things. For a while we still used my artificial tree, once we decided to go real, some years we've had my dad bring one back for us from his tree farm up north, one year we went to a farm and cut one down, and one year Ryan brought one home from work, because one of the home improvement stores his boss had a contract with was giving away trees to employees since it was getting close to Christmas and they weren't selling as fast.
For at least the past 4 or 5 years we've been getting a tree from this farm that sets up a lot nearby. It's one of those old school lots with the string lights around the perimeter and the silver air stream camper parked on-site. I love it, brings back great memories of the tree lot my dad always took us to get our tree. For Emily's first Christmas, she was only 8 months old, so I just sat in the truck with her while Ryan picked one out, but last year we all walked the lot, picket out a tree and then went to dinner afterward. I decided to make that our yearly tradition, dinner and picking out the tree....and you have to go once it's dark so you can get the full affect of the lights strung up around the lot.
This year we have to add Emily's first hair cut to the festivities. She had an appointment a few days ago, but it was raining and yucky and cold, and well...when you're a work-at-home mom, you can do whatever the hell you want to do, and I didn't feel like going out in the rain that day. So I rescheduled for tomorrow. She's actually had several hair cuts by yours truly, and her Grammy. Her bangs grow like weeds, so we've had to keep up on those. But I do a terrible job, so assuming they don't cut them too short, I'll be excited for her to have evenly cut bangs for the first time ever. I'm also going to have them trim her hair overall a little. She has really long hair for a toddler, it's about to the middle of her back. But I've noticed the ends are really thin and scraggly, and she's almost 3 so I figured it was high time for her first official cut.
Her very first cut was actually when I cut off her rat tail around 8 months. She was born with a full head of hair, but for some reason had this little tail that grew so much faster than anything else. When I finally said screw the superstitions about cutting before one year, it was around 6 inches long when I cut it. But this will be her first official, at a salon, cut by a professional, hair cut. I'm so excited, I hope she does ok. But this place sounds great, it's especially for kids, they have a lot of games and videos, and the chairs are little cars that they can sit in while they get their hair cut. The website also boasted about how good the stylists are about working with the kids, and have even been known to walk around the salon while cutting hair, especially for special needs kids who have troubles sitting still for too long. Hopefully the experience will live up to what they claim. It's kind of funny, I booked the appointment for the baby's first hair cut package. I am not entirely sure what that entails, but I assume it lets them known it's her first cut so she'll be nervous, and probably includes a keepsake locke or something. But I feel kind of funny saying baby's first, and here will come in this walking, talking 2.5 year old. But, I think a lot of girls are much older than boys for their first hair cut. Wish us luck!
No comments:
Post a Comment