One of the best things, for me, about A. growing up, and B. living in Vancouver as an adult, is the fact that I get to have this incredible, awesome friendship with my mother. Truly, it is something that has cultivated throughout the last twelve years or so, because before that, it was a mother/daughter relationship much like many little girls. But when I reached the age where I could look at my parents and see them not as the flawless, law enforcing, all powerful and forever correct super-beings we believe them to be as kids, but as the flawed, individual and vastly varied humans they really are, I realized that my parents were pretty damn amazing.
First of all, they managed to raise two productive, levelheaded, educated children who aren't on any drugs of any sort (other than birth control), aren't in therapy, aren't in jail, aren't on welfare, who don't have any illegitimate children or arrest records. Two kids who have become kind, thoughtful, consider humans, who both look around and seek out how to better the world around them, for both themselves and their friends, but also, the world in general. I know I sound like I am tooting my own horn, but mostly I am talking about my brother and somewhat assuming he would say the same about me. My brother definitely was a handful as a small child, with health problems and a very dependent temperament, while I gave them more of a struggle through our teen years with my love life on my sleeve and my somewhat lack of direction when it came to the future. But fast forward to now and you have two thriving adults who value their parents and each other more than just about anything.
Second of all, they are just great people to spend time with. Always there for a laugh, a story, a movie, a day out shopping. Always there, always caring and always loving. I know when a child is born, they are flawless, innocent and easy to love. But as we grow up and develop minds, opinions and attitudes of our own, we can be a lot less lovable. And my parents love me unconditionally.
For the past three or four Mondays, my mom and I have been spending the days together. She's been off of work for the summer (a perk of working at ESD) and my weekends have fallen on Sundays and Mondays, so it seemed pretty natural for us to get together on Mondays for shopping, walking and our "WW" meetings together. I have already gotten so used to having those days with her and since school is starting again soon, she won't be able to meet me like before.
I've been thinking about her and I and my future children and though that is a future that is a few years away, I have to say it scares me a bit. Because I've had such an amazing mother, I worry that I won't be half the mother she was to me. Just because this is something that I want so badly, it doesn't mean that its something that is going to come naturally and flawlessly to me. I look at the other mothers I know and how amazing they are with their kids . . . there has to be a bad apple in every bunch, right? What if it's me?
My patience is short. My stubborn streak is wide and long and thick. I hear obnoxious children screaming in the store and I have half a mind to go and thank the mother for reminding me why I am not yet a mother. I couldn't handle that; not yet at least. Children running in my way at the grocery store make me want to scream and kids that roll by on those damn Heely shoes (indoors) make me want to trip them. I want to grab them and ask them "Where is your mother and why isn't she watching you?"
I worry that I'll have this child and it will be perfect until I get my hands on it and I manage to screw it up. I am not saying that I don't have my flaws and scars, but my parents did a damn good job of not turning us into something they wouldn't be proud of. Is it an irrational fear that I might not be as skilled?
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