Little Bits of Pixie Dust

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thourougly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO, what a ride!!"

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Sorry Mom!

Let me start off by saying that I love my mother more than anything in the whole world. She is an awesome wife, mother, and friend to both me and my brother and my father, and has managed to keep our family together despite many obstacles. She is someone that I admire above all others, because she was a single mom for many years and I would never have known if she hadn't told me later that sometimes she had to do people's laundry for extra money, or that one year she didn't have any money for Christmas presents and wrapped up a bunch of her old stuffed animals from my grandma's attic and given them to me from "Santa". She is one of the strongest, funniest, warm-hearted people I have ever met, and I thank my lucky stars every day that she is a part of my life.

With that said, I am going to tell you one of the moments that I regret SO much. When I was in high school, my mom and I were tight. We were more like best friends than mother and daughter... though as she always told me when I was angry at her, "I am NOT your friend, I am your MOTHER, and you will treat me with respect!" Anyways, most of the time we got along great. Well, my junior year of high school, the people that sold class rings came to our school and handed out a bunch of information about them. I wanted a class ring badly, and took all the stuff home for my mom to look at.

My mom poured over the brochures. She told me that it was a lot of money for us to spend on one thing, but she could see how much it meant to me so she was going to spring for it. But she didn't feel comfortable just writing out a check for hundreds of dollars and then handing it to her sixteen year old daughter without ever actually speaking to the people that were receiving the money. During lunchtime, the class ring people had set up a booth in the cafeteria, where students could drop off their checks or look at rings. My mom dropped the bomb...

She wanted to come up to school, at LUNCHTIME, and talk to the ring people.

I was mortified. I told her, in no uncertain terms, that it would be the end of my social life, that I would never hear the end of it... "D's mom came into to school! She was the only parent there!" At this age, I didn't even want my mom to drop me off at school, much less come in and be there at the busiest time of the day, the virtual center of high school life. I cried, begging her not to embarrass me by showing up. I told her that I would be damaged for life if she subjected me to this humiliation.

But in the middle of my heartless rant, I never stopped to think about how this would make my mom feel. The poor woman was already shelling out money for a ring that she knew very well I wouldn't wear in a year. And besides, I think she was genuinely blindsided, being that we had such a close relationship and all. She didn't understand why I would have such a problem with this. And all I could do was bawl and beg her not to be seen in public.

She didn't come to school, by the way. She gave me a check and I did the whole process by myself. I ended up with a huge ring that I wore for a little over a year, and now it sits in my jewelry box under the sink. But I never forgot the look on her face when I had that outburst. I knew that I had broken her heart, just a little.

I know that someday I will have kids, and that someday they will tell me that I have to drop them off two blocks away from school, or that I'm not allowed to come to their game because I am "so uncool". And this will be fair payback.

I think that forever I will feel just a little guilty about hurting my mom's feelings like that. I grew up a little that day, and so did she. I learned that I had the power to make my mom feel like crap, and that wasn't such a good feeling.

I'm sorry Mom!

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