Not so Great Expectations

Mother daughter relationships aren't always as wonderful as Hallmark cards make them seem.  Nor are they often as bad as made out to be on TV dramas.  No matter what the reading of the stage of relationship with my mother happens to be at any given moment, I realize that I am blessed to have a relationship with my mother.

Today is my mom's birthday.  My mom has lived most of her life being a mother.  For some reason, that fact impressed me when I thought about it.  It's not like she stopped being a mom when I turned 18. Or 21.  Or when my baby sister turned 21.

Of course I remember lots of her bad mom moments. But I've forgotten some of the good ones.  Not the big good ones like when she came and cleaned my house every two weeks when I was on bedrest when expecting my youngest daughter. Incidentally, many forgotten good moments occurred during my teenage years I was not even aware at the time were good mom moments.  

I have a teenage daughter.  I am not patient about her decision making process during shopping, the way my mom was.  I find that swimsuit shopping for my daughter is almost as bad as swimsuit shopping for myself.  Not for the same reasons.  She is absolutely adorable and looks cute in anything.  She is the world's slowest decision maker, however.  And almost too tiny for adult sizes and slightly too big for kid sizes.  And not allowed to wear super skimpy bikinis.

Moms do not get appreciated for sitting through hours of swimsuit shopping with teenager daughters when they could be making dinner or gardening or at least shopping for themselves.  Nor do they get appreciated for spending 60 bucks on the only swimsuit within a 50 mile radius that both mother and daughter agreed upon.  They are actually expected to do this, I realize now. Just as I am finding out moms are expected to make stains vanish from favorite shirts, fix scheduling glitches, and reveal the secrets of Algebra.

I always had clean jeans in my drawers, but always having clean clothes was another expectation, not revered as a small miracle. I expected that there would be food in the pantry when I came home hungry from school.  I expected her to respond in a sweet, motherly way even when I took things out on her. I expected her to drop everything and listen to me when I wanted to talk and to not even ask how things were when I was in a bad mood and didn't want to talk.  And she was expected to know when I wanted which.

 The time is not that far away when I will have been a mother for more of my life than not.  Moms don't stop being moms; they are expected to adapt to the ever-evolving expectations of their children.

The older my oldest child gets, the less I analyze the decisions my mother made and just appreciate that she cared enough to be there and make them. I used to say my mom was a great mom of babies and small children.  And she was.  But of course, I was an idiot and had yet to learn that there are a million more parenting decisions to make when one has teenagers, and therefore a million more opportunities to make mistakes. I should have said she was a good mom. Period.  But I was still editing the script of my teenage years.  When my mom was figuring out what the heck to do with a hormonal teenager, and the next one right behind her in line, as well as still pay sufficient attention to the kindergartner.  She was adjusting to living in a new state away from everything she knew - a woman who hates change and loves security.  She was trying to bring up her family on half the salary her husband used to make.

I appreciate my mom.