Happy Mother’s Day Mom.

I’ve spent my entire 35 years trying to please my very intense, Marine father.  However, I have not once felt the need to “try” to make my mother proud.  She just always is proud of me and has always made me feel very secure in her love.

I call her every day, with no particular topic or question at hand-just because I enjoy hearing her voice.  We are very different people.  My daughter is much more like her than I was, am, or ever can aspire to be.  They are both people-pleasers, always concerned about others, always trying to make people happy.  They have a genuine empathy that is instilled in their hearts and could not be faked.  They can both be very affected by things people say or do, albeit unintentional or just an offhand comment.  I am much more nonchalant and things roll off my back much more quickly and I am definitely not all sweetness and goodness as those two are.

My mother has set the bar so high for parenting it is almost impossible to attain.  She worked full time my entire childhood, cooked meals every single day, packed lunches, did all the laundry, sewed, quilted, gardened, painted and built…she is more Martha Stewart than Martha Stewart.  To this day, I ask her to hem pants or fix a pillow or any other chore that to her is routine, but to me a major undertaking.  Just recently, she revamped a too-large tablecloth into the right size, making the excess material into matching napkins and pillows for my sun porch.  Over the past 15 years she has taken care of her two elderly parents, her aging mother-in-law and helped all of them to die with dignity.  She has watched her children have children and has become the role model my daughter so desperately emulates.  She is the “fun” Nana who takes B hiking and playing outside and yes, shopping too!  She is a fitness fanatic and has instilled that love of the outdoors and exercise in both me and my daughter.

We are so different I sometimes have trouble understanding her reasons and her upsets.  When she is stressed out, I have a hard time being compassionate, as that’s not something I “get”.  I often say that I won’t allow stress in my life…I feel it is a choice and drama that I don’t have time to allow in.  She doesn’t understand the bittersweet feelings of remarriage and divorce and single parenting.  She’s been with the same man since she was 19.  (She conceived ME on her wedding night)!

Yet, sometimes, she still surprises me with a bout of open-mindedness.  Recently I told her the Twilight books were incredibly good and since I don’t usually love fiction and especially not popular fiction, she listened.  She’s now on the third book and surprisingly completely addicted!  My daughter and I adore movie nights at her house, where we snuggle up and eat junk food.

She is passionate and strong and hopelessly in love with my father.  She’s curious and loyal and always there.  Getting angry with her can upset me like nothing else can.  She’s ridiculously wrapped around my 9 year-olds finger and it both makes me envious and warm inside, all at the same time.  I can’t begin to imagine a day when she is not there.  I’m not sure I would be able to go on, without her in this world.  It gives me hope that my daughter too, might feel I am necessary, needed…long after she actually needs my physical presence every day.

Thank you Mom…I love you.  You have done the most exceptional job of mothering I have ever seen.  Thank you for giving me everything and then some.  For traveling to stores far away so I could have those Guess jeans back in 10th grade.  For allowing me all the sports and clubs and activites that kept you running for all my teenage years.  For hunting down a Cabbage Patch kid when I was crying each night because I wanted one so badly. For making every Christmas, Easter and even St. Patrick’s Day magical.  For gifting me with the most idyllic childhood imaginable.  For lying in bed with me, spooning behind me and holding me as I cried myself to sleep, the night my first husband left our home and I drove to your house, 7 months pregnant.  For supporting me as I stubbornly held onto my home for three years after leaving my husband.  For helping me when I bought a house in a more convenient location.  For being so happy when I remarried and built a new family.  For….just being.  I love you more than you can ever know.  And I appreciate it.  Every last thing…every day of the last 35 years, and 4 months.  There is no other you.  How lucky am I?

Happy 35th Mother’s Day Mom.

So I woke up this morning and guess what?  You grew up.  Overnight.  You still snuggle me and give me kisses, but they are the kisses of an older child, who does it more to placate the parent, than for their own comfort.  I go into your room at night and smell your breath, still childlike and sweet and look at the length of you tangled up in the Hello Kitty sheets you still adore.  (Just last weekend, before leaving for your Dad’s, you said, “So Mom, if you wash my sheets, can you just put the same ones back on?  They don’t NEED to be washed, but if you do, can you just make sure you put them back on before I get home?  The same ones?  Ok?  Mom…the Hello Kitty ones you know?”.  Got it princess…got it).

I love how mature you have become and how enjoyable you are.  The things you require from me are no longer any sort of obligation or work, but fun!  We have such a great time together.  I drag you everywhere I have to go, because I so love your company!  Not all your friends are like this-their parents don’t love all their moments with them, but I cherish them.  I know you are the only baby I’ll ever have…and the days are just running right out of your childhood.

You are 9.  When I was 9, I was in 4th grade and had my first boyfriend.  We are still friends to this day.  I cared about what people thought.  I started to develop my own interests and opinions.  I know where you are at and I love how you are growing up.  But how I wish you would stay who you are now.  The girl who still loves when we go to Nana and Poppa’s and we get to sleep in the same bed and wake up together.  I dread the day that our relationship becomes “grown-up”.  Who will keep me young then?

Disciplining you, when I have to do it, albeit rarely, is tough.  I don’t like to see you sad, but I want you to be a good person.  So I do it.  And then I run in and hug you when you are sleeping and whisper in your ear, “I love you.  You are my favorite person EVER.  You are amazing and I adore you”.  then I sneak out, only to check on you several other times in the night (and tuck in that leg that inevitably pops out of the covers two seconds after I leave the room).  But it makes me tear up a little…to know you aren’t a baby anymore.  And you never will be again.  I blinked and it was gone. I won’t have a baby again.  Ok, now I might cry in studyhall…the students would love that right?

You now are a whole shoe size larger than me.  Shopping in stores that teenagers shop in.  Doing your homework because you CARE, not because I force you.  Talking about your dream jobs and what college will be like someday.  College???  Seriously?  Sweetie, make sure it’s someplace warm, because I know I’m going to have to be close by.

So I’m leaving teaching.  I do not like it.  I’m not going to finish up the certification to finish out my Masters in the content (it’s pricey and involves lots of jumping through ridiculous hoops, as NYS is prone to require of it’s working people).  I will not do this job again.  I don’t like it…it’s boring and my brain needs some intellectual stimulation.  And crap.  I feel like I’ve been off half the year.  I thought I had minimal social interaction as a scientist, but there is even less as a teacher.  Unless you count my silly teenage Chemistry students.  Teaching college was fun…this, well I don’t even know what I would categorize this as.

I’m going back to my old job.  I had an “interview” on Monday.  It went remarkably well.  It was to work for two new investigators coming in…on a new system, a parasite that is a tremendous problem for developing countries.  And to be their lab manager for both labs.  It sounded like such a good fit and I even broached the whole possiblity of working part-time status, with 3 ten hour days and it was not dismissed…even stated as a very likely possiblity.  Also, it wouldn’t need me on regular schedule until some point in August, so I could still have this summer off with my girl.  It all sounds so good…the three days a week I work, B will have to get a sitter who can pick her up from school and stay with her for an hour or two.  And she’ll have to get up for school and get dressed, since I’ll leave before she’s up, three days a week.  We talked about it and she’s fine, since I’ll be home two more days a week now.  She’s going to be ten when this all happens and my husband will make sure she’s up and fed for school.  He already drops her at her Daddy’s house so he can bring her to school each day.  Hopefully this all falls into place as nicely as it sounds.  I’m so excited to get back to work.  And very grateful to all the people who are helping to make that happen.

And hopefully, I’ll have lots more time to blog!