Back to School Nightmare

Dear Irie,

I'm heading back to school to start a new year. Two nights ago, I woke up at 3:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. It was the night before the first day of school, and I had had one of those back to school dreams. Only this wasn't one of the usual ones where I show up on the first day and have none of my papers run off and no plan of what to do, or where I find out they've moved me to the auditorium with 60 kids who don't give a damn that I'm talking to them. No, this one was a first and it took my breath away.

This one was about a school shooting. 

I have never in 13 years of teacher dreams dreamed of a school shooting and it was a little horrifying. 

It reminded me of some real talks I had to have this past school year, both at home and in my classroom. On Valentine's Day, 17 people were killed at a high-school in Florida. You and your brother asked questions about the things you heard your dad and I talking about, and I tried to answer those questions without scaring you. And that is such a thin line. I do not want you to be scared to go to school. I do not want you to be scared for your dad and I to go to school. But- the truth is it's a potentially scary place.

One day a couple of weeks after the shooting, my students asked me: "If you were a receptionist in the front office and someone came in with a gun and told you to tell everyone to go to the gym, would you do it?" 

My first reaction was of course not, but these are inquisitive teenagers and as the saying goes, "you can't bullshit a bullshitter", so I took a second to think of a better answer, because no, I would not send a school full of children to their deaths, if I could help it. They took my silence as an answer, immediately assuming that answer was yes. 

Finally, I said no. No, I would hope in that moment I could think of something that I could say over that intercom that would let the rest of the school know what was going on without getting me instantly killed. 

They didn't believe me. "Why wouldn't you just do it?" they asked. 

"Because then you all would get hurt," I told them. You would have thought I spoke another language from the looks on their faces. 

"I know you are 14 and 15," I explained, "but you are still kids."

One girl rolled her eyes and said she hates when grown-ups say that. 

"No," I continued. "I don't mean you aren't smart or mature or capable of making decisions. I mean you are someone's child."

"And you're someone's mother," a girl up front reminded me, as if that one fact doesn't drive every moment of my life. 

I nodded. That's why I wouldn't do it. I went on to explain. "Every day I send my babies to school, and I can't be there to protect them. I trust that their teachers and the adults in their school would do everything in their power to save them, if necessary. Your parents have entrusted me with the same task." 

"You would do that?" they asked, and again I nodded. 

You see, Irie, I never want to leave this world, not as long as you and your brothers are in it. And I sure as hell never thought these were questions I would have to answer when I declared secondary education as my major. And if it all hits the fan one day, I may pee myself and cry for my mama- but I would like to believe I'm made of tougher stock than that. I love you and your brothers, and I know someone loves my students just as fiercely, and most days I even love them a little bit too :) I hope I never have to find out how far I would go to save them, to send them back home to their parents, but I don't think I could live with myself any other way. 

Which brings me back to my dream. 

I wasn't in any actual school that I have ever been in, but the students were ones I have taught, and, in the dream, you and your brothers were somewhere in the building without me. 

I heard the shots as I stood outside the cafeteria, and I knew instinctively what they were and that I needed to hide. Only, there was nowhere to hide. I helped those that I could get away and then I just crouched, praying that I wouldn't be seen. But as the gunman got closer, and my position exposed, I knew it was no use. He looked down at me, this student that I have taught and laughed with, and he held a huge gun in his hand. "She taught Chin," some other voice said, "she was good to him." The shooter nodded, fired a random shot off to the side of me and kept walking. I turned and watched as they continued on their way and another kid high-fived them and then they were captured. 

I got up from my spot and ran to the doors just as children came pouring out. In that group was your older brother. I collapsed on the ground and pulled him into my arms and wept as I rocked him, repeating "I am so sorry. I am so sorry." Because although he was physically unharmed, it was not my doing. I had not kept him safe. Sometime while I rocked him, he morphed into your younger brother who will start kindergarten next week, and I cried even harder. Five-year-olds don't know anything about school shootings or intruder drills, but that will all soon change. 

I woke up and looked at the clock. 3:32 glared back at me. I used to not be able to sleep the night before school started back, because I was so excited about what the year would bring or slightly worried about teaching those 60 kids in the auditorium. I've never been worried that I won't be able to reach you and your brothers when you need me or that I might not be able to get someone else's kids to safety. These were not things I thought of in 2005 when I walked into my first high school classroom, but 13 years, 3 kids and too many school shootings to count have changed the way I see the world. 

I don't share this to scare you. I feel safe in my school. I have felt safe in every school I have ever taught in, but I won't lie and say the thought doesn't linger in the back of my mind, or that I don't scan rooftops and tree lines during fire drills. 

And I will forever be sorry that I haven't been able to make this world a safer place for all my children (both biological and scholastic). 

Love,

Mama 

To parent or not to parent? It's not even a question!

Dear Irie,

We went to Chuck E Cheese today, and I am utterly convinced that I was being punished for some terrible crime against humanity that I was unaware I had committed. I don't like crowds, but I manage, and so the fact that it was probably dangerously close to breaking some kind of fire code in that place, the crowd wasn't the problem. It was the people (parents) within the group.

I try very hard to teach you and your brothers the right way to behave in the world. Not because there is always going to be someone there to punish you if you don't, but because sometimes something is just the right thing to do. So when I make you wait in line only to have two little girls run up and break in front of you when it's your turn, it frankly pisses me off that their mother is nowhere to be found. Actually strike that, because I did find their mother chatting with a friend as I and another mother asked her daughters to step back.

And then as you and your brother were spending your tickets on prizes, Andrew picked a ring with a mustache on it, and the little girl next to him got right in his face and said, "boys don't wear rings." Any time that I have ever heard you or your brother say "ugly" things to other children, I have reprimanded you. I may not always make you apologize, but I always explain to you why you shouldn't have done that. But this mother, she said nothing.

I'll admit that when it comes to parenting there are a billion ways to do it and get it right, there is no perfect way and honestly, most of the time I don't know what the hell I'm doing. However, I have a hard time with the way parents like these allow their children to do whatever they want at the expense of the children around them. True, neither of you were devastated, except you were not happy that you had waited and you thought these girls were going to take your turn. I think it's more my problem than yours. It's hard to teach you kids how to be good; it would be so much easier to tell you to do whatever you want. And part of me wonders if I am doing you an injustice by making you patient and kind, afterall, isn't it the squeaky wheel that so very often gets the oil? It certainly seemed to be the case when I was in the work world.

So I am stumped, sweet girl, do I say screw it and tell you to take what there is to take and speak your mind when you feel like it or do I keep fighting the good fight? Do I keep trying to make you think through your words and your actions, and does it make you weaker if I do that?

The truth is I don't know, though we both know which path I'll choose and I will continue to worry and wonder that I am doing it right, and you will continue to say "but he" or "but she" when some other poor child is poorly parented, though it looks like so much more fun from your point of view.

All I can hope is that one day you will thank me for not letting you become an arrogant and spoiled adult who thinks the world owes them. And at the very least, your teachers will like you.

Love you,

Mama  

Motherless on Mother's Day

Three and a half years ago my mother died, suddenly and tragically. One moment I was washing dishes and the next I was identifying her wedding bands. She was twenty days from her 54th birthday. After that night, I knew for certain that no matter what we do, we are never guaranteed another day with those we love. There are so many things I never asked my mother, so many topics I still need her thoughts on. So I started writing letters to my own daughter, so she would never have to ask herself what her mother thought or felt.

The following is the letter I wrote to her on May 12, 2014 - the day after my first motherless Mother’s Day.

Dear Irie,

     It’s the day after Mother’s Day. My first motherless Mother’s Day. I survived it, probably because essentially it’s no worse than being motherless every other day of the year. I have no cards or gifts or flowers to commemorate the day, there is no tangible gift. I didn’t want a gift this year because  for years I bought my mother gifts for Mother’s Day, and now those gifts are sitting in a house that I will soon clean out to make my own. It is my last gift to her: to take the home she loved and fill it with love and laughter and the smell of southern cooking, the way she always did. You see, she couldn’t take any of the things that we bought her along with her, but I do hope she was able to take her memories, because I am sure even Heaven gets lonely without the three of you there.

     So instead of things, what I do have, though not exactly free, is absolutely priceless. I have the memories of a 24 hour quick trip to the beach. I have the vision of your little brother, Crawford toppling backwards into the water as a wave knocked him down, and yet he got up laughing and crouched down for the next one. I have the memory of your bravery as you ventured further and further out to sea and the sound of your name in my ears as your daddy and I called you back, the way you hugged me at dinner as we ate shrimp boil and I rocked Crawford to sleep, and the happiness as your big brother Andrew dug into his own plate of shrimp and then ate ice cream that looked like Play-Doh. I am filled with the happiness that can only be felt from tucking a warm baby (no matter how big or old) into bed after they fall asleep somewhere unusual and then waking up to the voices of those same babies telling you happy Mother’s Day. I have the words sent to me by friends and family that loved my mother and our little family.

     Ironically in my attempt to escape thoughts of my mother, I found myself only steps away from the spot where we spent countless summer hours sitting under an umbrella and watching you and your brothers play in the sand while we talked about everything and nothing all at once. It was in those moments that all of the years of pushing and pulling against my mother became worth it. It was there in those beach chairs with the sound of waves breaking in the distance, that I told her how badly I wanted children but couldn’t conceive, it was there we rejoiced when finally I found out you were growing within me, and it was there that we planned your perfect future with no clue she would never see any of it. We were cocooned in our shaded world where Maw Maws watched their granddaughters become women and danced at their weddings instead of being ripped away, leaving us to alternate between the world we planned with them and the one we must navigate without them. It was those moments with her and those glimpses of her -- not just as my mother and your grandmother -- but as a woman and a friend that she gave me every year for my birthday and that I wish I could give her now.  And although every moment was not perfection, I am reminded often that our perfectly imperfect life fits me just fine.

     For the past six and half months I have felt like an anchorless ship, tossing on a sea that is not always calm. The thing no one mentions about losing your mother, is the irony of it. You see the one person I want to talk to about what happened to her, is her. The only person I feel would understand and talk me through the pure injustice of what happened, is my mother, and yet she’s not here, and for the life of me I can’t figure out how to be okay with that.

     I was thinking today that there should be some magic clause that brings the people we lose back to us to help us understand why we lost them in the first place, because although others will talk us through it, frankly it’s only the thoughts of the one we lost that we care about; it is their reassurance that they are happy and in a better place that we need, their affirmation that we crave, not the words of people who only hope that it’s true. I want to ask her how to heal the broken pieces of my heart, and yet I remember being three years old and her holding me against her as she cried for her grandmother, I can still feel her sadness as she mourned her own parents till the day that she became the mourned. I fear that I will never get over her because I see that she never got over them. And really I guess that’s the way it works.

     The thing about missing your mother, is that you don’t know you miss her all the time. It is only when I let myself think about it and truly feel it, that I realize my body has become weakened by the weight of missing her. And though I wish I was given power over when I miss her, I am not.  I can go days, maybe a week or two without that sickening feeling when reality sets in and I realize she is actually gone and not simply living in another town or on vacation.

I miss her most not when I am at my lowest, but when I am at my highest.

I miss her when I am so happy that I cannot wait to share that happiness with her,

I miss her when I am excited and I need someone to be excited with me.

I miss her when I have a plan or a dream that I want to hear spoken aloud so that it gains weight and becomes reality.

I miss her when I need someone to believe in me the way that only a mother truly can.

I miss her when I need someone to think it can be done because I want it, when I need practicality to weigh less than the pure fire in my gut.

I miss her when I dream peacefully and wake to the feel of her kiss on my forehead and the certainty that she has been with me.

     I wasn’t always a great daughter. I believe that is true for most of us with any real spirit of our own.  And yet, I can’t truly regret most of it. -- I was a daughter and she was a mother, and neither of us could escape the struggle of me becoming who I needed to be, and her making sure that I survived it. My mother rarely, if ever, yelled. We waged a silent war of wills that we somehow survived and came out closer in the end.

     As I scrolled through Facebook today, after avoiding it on Mother’s Day, I was swamped with picture after picture and post after post of mothers and children and the expressions of love and appreciation that they shared. I wonder though if they will feel this way on July 28 -- the day I have a birthday without the woman who gave me life or October 17 -- the anniversary of the last time I hugged my mother and told her I loved her, thinking I would talk to her the next day and eat at her table that Sunday. I hope that even on those days that seemingly mean nothing, mothers are loved, and appreciated, and told so.

     As I sit in my mother’s house, filled with things but no people, I realize what she knew all along. You, baby girl, are my greatest gift, my greatest blessing. I do not need gifts or flowers; in all this world, all I need is you, and your brothers, and love that comes without conditions.

Happy Mother’s Day to the three of you, because without you, I would have no reason for celebration.

     Love,

     Mommy

You have the right to say NO

Dear Irie,

My mother never ever talked to me about rape. I don’t blame her, in our house sex was not discussed, so violent, forced sex was not to be dissected. Because of this and maybe because of the culture I was raised in, I grew up believing rape was something that happened violently at the hands of strangers. Sadly, that isn’t the case or, more accurately, it isn’t only the case.

Over the past few days the internet has erupted over the sentencing of a rapist and the responses by his victim and his father. Most people are in agreement that this rapist did not get a sentence that fit his crime. He took away a woman’s peace of mind, her self confidence, her sense of safety and who knows what else, and in return he was given six months in jail. His father believed six months was too long for “twenty minutes of action”. Even writing those words brings tears to my eyes as I try to imagine what those “twenty minutes of action” actually translate to in that woman’s world. Those “twenty minutes of action” will follow her for the rest of her life: every time she wants to have a drink but worries that this could happen to her again, every time she meets a new man that she may be interested in, every time she wakes up with the feel of his hands on her, every time she looks at herself in the mirror and she wonders what it was about her that made him think it was okay to do this to her. I am only projecting what she might feel, though she did express many of her thoughts in a statement she shared at the hearing, a statement that began with "you don't know me, but you've been inside me, and that is why we're here today." Words that, as a woman, make me nauseous and angry and so very helpless. And yet, I applaud her for standing up even if it had little effect on his sentencing.

Rape Victim's Statement

At school a few weeks ago, we had to show a video about sexual assault to our students. The video was more a lecture of a woman sharing her experience with sexual assault. Half way through the video a boy said, “well, now she’s just asking for it.” I couldn’t stop the presentation but my stomach rolled with the injustice of his words and as soon as it ended I addressed him, because I know it is remarks like that that keep victims from coming forward. It is what keeps us wondering if we were really raped or if it was somehow our fault. It is what rapists count on to keep us quiet. So know this my sweet strong, yet fragile girl: it is never your fault.

Every woman- no matter how drunk or sober, no matter how many men she has or has not slept with in the past, no matter how much or how little clothing she is wearing- every woman has the right to make conscious and coherent decisions about her sex life each and every time she has sex. You always have the right to say no, I don’t care if you have had sex with him before, you can always say no. I don’t care if you are drunk, you can say no. I don’t care if you think you owe him or you’ve told him you love him or he swears everyone is doing it and you’re just being a bitch- YOU CAN SAY NO. And if you are unable to say no because you are not conscious, that should be answer enough.

In the case I mentioned earlier, this rapist’s picture shows a clean shaven, nicely dressed, preppy kid. What we’re not always told is that rapists look like that too. Rapists look like our boyfriends and our neighbors and our classmates and hell, even our teachers and our preachers. Rapists look like people we come into contact with everyday. And we have been conditioned in many ways to excuse what they do: they didn’t know better, they were drunk, they didn’t realize I didn’t want it, or he  bought me dinner or I really care about him so how could I tell him no? None of those are reasons to have sex with anyone. The only reason to have sex with a man is because you want to. I’m not going to get into when you should have sex or whether or not you should be in love or married or yada yada yada, but I am going to say that in your life no matter how old or young you are, no matter how long you have known someone or loved them or whatever else, if you do not want to have sex with him you have the right to say no and have him listen. And your reasons for not wanting to don’t matter. It could be because you don’t feel ready or you don’t feel sexy or his breath stinks. No reason is too silly or too serious, you have the right to say no.

I wish I could say that was it- say no and you’re safe, but sadly it’s not the case. And so yes, you have to be diligent and you have to watch your back and, yes, you have to be cautious of even the nicest, sweetest, choir singing, All-American clean cut kid. I hate it for you and I hate it for your brothers, but our reality is there are people out there who believe they are entitled to anything- even your body. I wish I could make that not true for you, but with sentences like the one just passed down I’m afraid that’s not changing anytime soon.

Be brave, baby girl. Be strong.

Say no if you need to. Say no if you want to.

And know that no matter what our society ever says, it is never your fault and I will always have your back.

Love,

Mama

Snapped Control

I’ve always oscillated between control freak and laid-back hippie, like I need my life in order so then I can just chill out. I thought of course that this would carry over into parenting: proof positive that a high GPA doesn’t mean you truly know anything.

My first indication that parenting was going to severely test my control freak tendencies came when my husband and I decided to get pregnant. Decided, as if it would be just that easy: I wanted it, so it would happen. Only, it didn’t happen. For months and months, it didn’t happen. In my need to control this situation I read everything out there on how to get pregnant, since apparently the old fashioned way wasn’t quite cutting it, I remember spitting on glass to see if my saliva dried into a fern pattern and peeing on more sticks than I could ever imagine, but still there was never a positive pregnancy test.

Finally, we discovered the problem and were able to move past it and in May of the next year I found out I was pregnant and was due in January. Only, I wasn’t supposed to be due in January. I’m a teacher, we have two months off in the summer, I was supposed to have a baby in late May, early June then I could spend the rest of the summer doting on my tiny bundle. But I couldn’t complain, not when I was so happy to be pregnant and certainly not when there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

At our first ultrasound we were thrown for another loop. As I lie on the table and the technician did her magic with the wand, she pointed out the strong heartbeat of our little one, then she said “and there’s the second heartbeat.” My husband and I nodded, neither of us all that interested in my heartbeat. “No,” she told us, “the second baby’s heart beat. You’re having twins.”

Don’t get me wrong I was ecstatic, I had always thought that having twins would be really cool, but still I had not planned on it, so all my dreams and visions had only involved one tiny bundle.

My pregnancy was relatively normal, we went to a ton of ultrasounds since twins are considered high risk. The babies were healthy and strong, everything was going as planned. And then on December 5, a Friday afternoon, I left work early and went to the doctor for my weekly appointment. “Are you having any discomfort?” the doctor asked. I looked at him like he was crazy. I was 33 weeks pregnant and measuring 52. You know what kinds of animals make it to 52 weeks? Horses, whales, elephants. I couldn’t sit in booths in restaurants and I couldn’t comfortably reach necessary parts after going to the bathroom, I hadn’t seen my feet in months, and I couldn’t get up if I lied down - I just kind of rolled side to side like a turtle on its back: some discomfort was a bit of an understatement.

 

If I had actually sat back in this chair, we would probably have had to hire a crane to get me up :)

“What I mean,” he clarified, “is, do you feel any tightening in your abdomen? You’re in labor.” Uh uh, nope I was not in labor. No, I was only 33 weeks, I had not packed a hospital bag, I had not finished getting ready for my little people’s arrival. I was once again not in control, but I was definitely in labor. Off to the hospital I went and I stayed for two days while I was pumped full of fluids and steroid shots and something to help keep those babies cooking. That first night the nurse offered me a sleeping pill, sure that I was never going to sleep with all the beeping from monitors and tubes going into me, I accepted. The thing about sleeping pills I didn't understand though is if you don’t actually go to sleep you turn into a drunken college student version of yourself. I was crying and apologizing for crying, blaming myself for not doing something to keep the babies from coming too soon before finally, blessedly falling asleep. I was officially neither in control nor laid back, and these kids hadn't even arrived yet.

I managed to make it through the weekend without delivering and I was sent home on bed rest, where I was forced to sit and do nothing, something I wish I would have taken more advantage of at the time.

Wednesday morning, less than 72 hours after being discharged from the hospital, my water broke and we were back. This time there was no stopping my now 34 week babies and at 8:03 that morning I delivered my son, followed seven minutes later by my daughter. I remember being exhausted but also feeling like there was nothing I couldn’t do. I had created people, I had grown humans and by some miracle they were here in the flesh. But my delivery was also not what I had imagined. There was no quiet birthing room with music playing with just my husband and I and the doctor, I delivered naturally but in an operating room filled with a complete audience.

Because my twins were preemies there were NICU doctors and nurses, because it was a shift change there were two doctors there for the delivery, there was an anesthesiologist that I never even used, I’m pretty sure at some point a marching band came through. I never imagined so many people would see my hoo ha!

I remember vividly the doctor saying “oh shit” as she delivered my daughter. I later learned that my daughter, who was born breech, had had her arm around her neck and when the doctor moved it to deliver her it snapped her humerus. But she healed, rather quickly and I learned my most valuable lesson as a mother.

Irie and her very tiny arm splint. 

I am not in control.

Oh I may pretend to be, 

I may hope to be, but I am not.

Things are going to happen in my home, in my world, to me and to my children that I cannot predict or stop. I have to let that go, I have to impact what I can and ride the rest out. When people hear that my daughter’s arm was broken they are shocked, appalled, saddened: any number of things, but in a way, I am thankful. I was terrified of these little people and how I was going to change the world to work for me and them, and I can’t do that. There will be times when I figuratively have to move an arm out of the way and it will no doubt get broken, but it will heal.

My children may not like everything that I do, there may be times I disappoint them or upset them, but they will heal. There may be times they disappoint or upset me, but I will heal There are a lot of things that we can do wrong when raising children, but there is very little that they can’t bounce back from. They’re resilient little creatures, and I’m thankful to learn that so am I.    

These two sweet angels were worth every bit of control I lost!

If I Should Die Before You Grow, These are the Things That You Should Know: Replicating Crimes

If I Should Die Before You Grow, These are the Things That You Should Know: Replicating Crimes: Replicating Crimes As far back as I can remember I was never Mommy’s little doll. Although pictures tell a somewhat different story, in m...

Replicating Crimes

Replicating Crimes

As far back as I can remember I was never Mommy’s little doll. Although pictures tell a somewhat different story, in my memory, we were never the mother/daughter duo I see all over my Facebook feed from today’s moms or even what I remember from my own friends growing up. I blamed this most solidly on my younger brother’s existence and then simply on my mom probably not liking me very much, which of course was her own fault, because I am totally likable! Seven years ago I gave birth to my first two children: twins, one boy and one girl. I gave birth essentially to a tiny replica of myself, from her blue eyes, to her dimpled cheek to the way she swings her hips and the sassy way she talks. It was then that I thought maybe, possibly, there was a chance that some of the blame for my mine and my mom’s relationship belonged to me.

Sometimes no matter how hard I’m working toward that mother/daughter duo, my daughter just doesn’t see it. Back in the Fall her school had a mother daughter night. I signed us up and was really looking forward to going despite the fact that people, especially mothers from her school, are really not my thing. Anyway, Monday I started getting sick, by Tuesday I had lost my voice and Thursday night I had body aches and chills. Friday at work, I sat balled up at my desk rocking back and forth, unable to eat lunch and praying my meds would kick in so I could get through the next few hours and get home for a nap before mother daughter night.

When we walked in the door of the school that night, I was already sweating. My fever was breaking as they ushered us into the cafeteria to do Zumba. Wait! Pump the brakes! What the hell? On Daddy/Daughter night they got to dress up and dance, it was like a little date night. Now I had to do Zumba in skinny jeans and Toms, without a sports bra, someone apparently wanted me dead. And did I mention I had ten stitches in my scalp at the time. But I pushed forward, I zumbaed despite my clothes sticking to me and feeling like I was dying. I jumped around and swung my arms and shook my shakable body parts, until finally my sweet baby looked up at me and said, “let’s get some water and sit down.” So we got water and we sat down and we watched the super mother daughter duos zumba. Irie sat looking longingly at the little aerobicizers so I offered to go back out. She told me I could sit, but she hopped up and went back on the floor. I sat for maybe a song and watched my beautiful, vibrant little girl zumba alone and I thought this is one of those times when I could be with her, when I could enjoy what she enjoys and show her that I like her, so I got up and I went back out to finish up with her.

The rest of the night was a bit of a blur; we played a game, did a craft, ate some ice cream and headed home. We walked in the back door of my childhood home and found my husband and two boys eating pizza and watching Batman. He asked how it went. “It was fun,” Irie told him, “but Mommy sat down instead of exercising with me.” I felt like I had been hit in the stomach. Her voice was so full of disappointment and sass. I reminded her of the three songs I had powered through before sitting, my husband reminded her I had been sick for a week, but she only argued that I had sat down when she wanted to dance.

I walked away, through the same small hallway my own mother had passed through, by the same laundry room where she had washed countless loads of my laundry, even when I was in college, and into the kitchen where she had cooked numerous mundane meals and I cried. And I wondered how many times my own mother had tried to reach out to me, how many times had she chosen what I wanted over what she needed and how many times had I thrown that back in her face with my lack of gratitude, with my own short sightedness that comes with ignorance of a mother’s sacrifice? My mother always made those sacrifices look so easy and I don’t know, maybe for her they were. Maybe she got some selfless gene that I lack, but I can’t imagine that I didn’t hurt her from time to time with my egocentricity. Because looking back I see her life as a constant giving in to what everyone around her wanted, whether it was what to watch on TV or where to go for dinner or vacation. Even after I had children, my mother quit her job, her little bit of independence, to take care of my twins while I worked and she never accepted a penny. She made mothering so easy for me because she picked up my worries and took care of them for me. I often told her how thankful I was for all she did, but I never told her I was sorry for the times in my youth I pushed her away because she was taken from me before I ever realized my crime. I just hope if it is true that my daughter is so very much like her mother, that one day I can be like mine.