11/01/11: Parents

As I told a friend (more on that later), my Facebook status has served as an outline for my blog.  I didn't intend for it to serve that purpose; I just came up with that excuse when said friend (more on that later) called me on needing to blog it and then called me on my crap excuse of using FB as an outline.  So, to keep my word, here it is...the blog posts I was reminded to write (more on that later).

"Nov. 1: Thankful for my parents and the start they gave me in life."  Facebook status and outline point #1.

I had fabulous parents.  I can never be the person who goes to therapy and tries to convince myself and my therapist that my current woes as an adult were because of my crappy childhood.  I tried that once.  It didn't work.  My parents truly were amazing.  Perfect?  Not at all, and they would be the first to admit it.  Did they make mistakes?  You bet, and they would be the first to admit it.  Was my childhood forever scarred by their mistakes, ruining every chance that I could be a responsible and successful adult?  Hello????  I am who I am and content with who I am largely because of my parents and what they did right and because of the mistakes they made.

My parents waited 10 years before I came along.  Believing she couldn't have children (because they had been trying without success to become pregnant for years), mom went to the doctor with what she thought was a virus she caught at work, only her coworkers had gotten well and she hadn't.  Yep, I was the virus.  I still think it hilarious that I was making her sick before she ever knew about me!  While my mom was in the office finding out that she would have this virus for years and years and that this virus was going to cost a lot of time and money, dad was in the cafeteria of the doctor's building getting a job transfer, promotion, and raise because they just happened to run into my mom's boss who had had the same virus everyone else had (not my mom's virus).  Yep, before they even knew I existed, I was making my mom sick and giving my dad a false sense of increased wealth.  SURPRISE!!!  Always the prankster...

As I mentioned, my parents had been married 10 years before I came along.  They both were in their 30s, and they knew they would not have any other children.  They had every reason to create an insufferable, entitled, selfish, spoiled brat.  Wait...they did (pregnant pause for contradiction...).  Seriously, they could have ruined me under the guise of loving me, but they used wisdom and discernment to guide their parenting, and they loved me enough but not "too much."  (Good parenting book by the way: "Parents Who Love Too Much.")  They both would have rescued me from difficulties in a proverbial heartbeat, but they allowed me to struggle and find my own way, to have my own successes and failures.  They could have babied me and kept me dependent on them, but they encouraged me to grow and be responsible and accountable.  Did they help me?  Of course they did!  I was their only child!  They provided for my every need and most of my wants.  They sacrificed for me.  They loved me with incomprehensible love.  

My parents taught me from an early age about freedom and responsibility.  I never had a curfew because they trusted me, and I didn't want to betray that trust because it was precious to me.  I never was grounded because mom said that would be punishing her more than me!  I was disciplined, sometimes by the switch from a peach tree that once grew in our yard but had to be cut down probably because it was nothing more than a trunk due to all the fruit-bearing branches being "pruned" so I could be pruned as well.  Sometimes that discipline was via lecture.  However, most of the time, that discipline was in allowing me to experience consequences, even ones they could foresee, so that I would learn the responsibility of decision and action.  My dad taught me how to think critically by asking me what options I had and what the possible pros and cons of each would be, then simply saying, "Choose."  My mom taught me how to love unconditionally.  Together, they were a great team, teaching me how to love with my whole being but to be smart about it.  

Sadly, my dad no longer is with me in body, but he definitely is with me in spirit.  I have great memories which become even sweeter when someone shares them with me.  He never met his grandson, which will always sadden me, but oh how proud he would have been!  

I am blessed to still have my mom.  She is relatively healthy and very sharp.  She loves me with a love I now can comprehend because I, too, am a mom.  I often say she has so much mothering in her that I gladly share her with others, and even though many view her as a mom, I am the only person on the planet fortunate enough to call her mom.  That is quite an honor for me.  I know that from a very young age I was not the daughter she had anticipated, but I know she believes I am the daughter she needed.  I have a magnet that reads, "I dress this way to mortify my mother" and even though it is unintentional, I know I do...mortify her, that is.  I loathe shopping.  I'm not big on jewelry.  We really are quite different types of women, but we are the same when it comes to loving our friends and family, especially each other.  And even though I try her patience and she tries mine, when all is said and done, never a single doubt remains about our relationship.  She is, after all, my mom.

If I can be the type of parent that my parents were, perhaps one day I will see my son being a wonderful dad to his children, knowing that the legacy that was passed was a wealthy one.  That will be the greatest honor of all, not just to me, but to my parents as well.