Becoming My Mother

When did I become that person? You know the one with hand sanitizer in her minivan that she lathers on her children after every errand. I think it was somewhere between the emergency room visits, the middle of the night breathing treatments, and the vomit.

When did I become the person who spends $40 on laundry detergent in Costco and actually uses all 180 loads of it... in a month?

When did I become that person that falls asleep on the couch in front of the TV?

I used to need company to cook a dish that uses a 9 X 13 pan, now I wonder if it’s enough to feed us all. When did that happen?

When did I start looking in the mirror and being surprised by lines around my eyes and mouth?

When did I become that person? You know, the one who worries and starts to look ten steps down the line at the consequences? I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but I remember one day on my way to costco seeing a motorcyclist going over 90 mph zigzagging in and out of traffic on the interstate. A few years ago I would have thought “cool bike”. Now my mind spun ahead to the poor driver who hits this crazy biker and spends years in jail for involuntary manslaughter. I thought of his poor mother burying her son. I thought of all kinds of worst-case scenarios and I realized that I was thinking like a mom, and not just any mom, but my mom.

Some of the things that used to drive me the most crazy about my mother, I find myself doing. I used to roll my eyes when she'd ask my dad to turn the music down, or call us to dinner like a drill sergeant, or come up with some ridiculous catastrophe that might happen if we didn't do whatever it was she thought we should. And headaches... who gets headaches all the time? A mom... that's who... or maybe it's just our sympathetic nervous system needing some quiet. Anyway, the more time goes by, the more and more I understand my mom.

Love is demanding, and no one loves quite like a mother. So this love manifests itself in all kinds of ways from nagging to hugs, but at the heart of it, is love. And love changes us. So much so that sometimes I don't even recognize myself. But I do see my mother!