Mirroring the Parental Units…

I left off with a teaser.  I have a love/hate relationships with themes and teasers in that, (a) I love to leave you hanging.  I really do.  I sit over here, hit the blue, oval publish button and sit back wondering if you’ll be waiting for the next installment, almost giddy with excitement that I’ve made you anticipate my next post.

No, really.  I do.

Yes, I know it’s sad.

Ok, so… that’s the love part, the (a).  And if we’ve got an (a) then we need a (b), right?  The hate part?  I hate to tell you that I’m going to write something and then not write it.  It’s almost like I’m not delivering what I’m promising which makes me a fake, a liar, and a host of other things that I don’t want to be or even implied.  But I know if I look back through this blog o’ mine that I’ll find things that I started and never finished.

Well, I know that I still owe you a post about my job.  But really?  It’s so not new anymore and I’ve already told you the coolest part… I get to Twitter and Blog… what more do you really need to know?

Ok, fine.  I’ll work on it.

But first?  I’m going to elaborate on falling in love with my father and becoming my mother.  While I have a slew of other posts that are milling around in my head, including one about me actually DRIVING the jet ski, I promised myself that I wouldn’t write anything else until I explained what I meant.

As I stated in my last post, I’m losing my cool.  Growing up, I often looked at my mother and wondered if she was happy; if she ever had any fun.  Mom was… well, Mom.  She took care of us, she fed us, she bandaged up our boo-boos and more often than not she was scolding my father for doing something she deemed “unsafe” or simply shaking her head at him.

Mom is an awesome Mom, but rarely was she jumping in the leaf pile with us.  The afternoon that we blew up (and I mean it was a big boom and flames that were incredibly high) the leaf pile in the creek she freaked out.

There was the day that my brother told my father he couldn’t drive the jeep up over the hill in the front of the house and so Dad did… there was a lecture there.

Or maybe to help prove this point I can mention the time that my brother told my dad he couldn’t kick the football from down below in the yard up to the house (in essence up the same hill that he bet my dad he couldn’t drive up).  Well, Dad kicked the football and not only did he make it to the house, it went through the lower right pane of glass in the bay window.

Shall I paint a picture for you?  It’s Thanksgiving day and Mom’s cooking in the kitchen when there’s a loud crash in the living room.  She turns the corner sees shattered glass and a football in the living room and my father and brother down below attempting not to laugh when they see that she is looking to see what’s happened.

But perhaps my absolute favorite story is the time that we hit the black ice.  It was winter time and we still owned the pickup truck.  At that time, it wasn’t illegal to transport children in the back with a top on it and we traveled across the country with a mattress between the wheel wells, a cooler and my brother and I in the back.

The old black Ford had a bench seat and this particular trip was a short one, an hour in length, from my maternal grandparent’s house to my paternal grandparent’s house.  It was cold.  It was icy. My brother was isolated in the back and I found myself perched on the seat in front between my mother and father.

My mother had placed her book on the dash board after it got too dark to read and we were all chatting about something or other.  I’m never quite sure but they were always interesting.  All of a sudden, the truck was spinning, the book that was once sitting on the dashboard was not swirling around the inside of the cab along with the maps and other assorted goodies that had been tossed up there.

Soon, we were again pointed in the direction that we were supposed to be going and looking to my left I saw my father grinning from ear to ear; he was on an adrenaline high and loved what just happened.  It was obvious.

To my right was my mother, obviously in shock and working hard to push her stomach out of the back of her throat back down to where it was supposed to be.  All of a sudden, her hands were flung on the dashboard and she screamed, “Jesus Christ, John.  If you’d slow down under warp speed…”

“What?” my father replied.  “I was impressed.  I kept it under control and missed the car that was coming at us in the next lane.”

Yes, Mom was furious blaming everything on his lead foot and Dad saw it as an adventure and something to break up the monotitiny of the hour drive through the Pennsylvania countryside.

The best part really has nothing to do with the coorelation of my current relationship to that of my parents, however it’s the funny part.  About five minutes down the road, my brother poked his head up from the back and asked what happened.  We always chuckle over that story.

But my mother played it safe.  She cooked.  She cleaned.  She made sure we were all where we were supposed to be when we were supposed to be there and Dad?

Well, Dad was the cool one.  Dad got us the best Christmas presents.  Dad was always presenting an adventure.  Dad did things with us that no other kids got to do and we loved it.  I love my mother to death but when it came to cool?  Well, let’s put it this way. Dad had a rule that he shared with my brother and I both when we entered our teenage years… “Teenagers do teenagers things.  If you do teenager stuff, I’m going to turn my head the other way.  However, if you’re mother finds out, then I have no choice but to punish you.”

And that was the honest to God’s truth.  When I cut school, I had no idea that Dad knew, but he did and he never said a word about it until that final report card came home indicating that I had missed 23 or so days of school.  After Mom’s rant and rage and after I departed for my room for safety, my father came to my room and repeated the rule to me, telling me he had no choice but to punish me.

So there’s that relational similarity.  I just don’t have the cool anymore like my mom.  Don’t get me wrong, we did cool stuff with my mom, but it was safe.  Like we would go on walks and pick Queens Ann Lace and put it in water with food coloring in it so they would change colors before dying leaving little colored dust all over the place.  We made cookies and decorated them and mom talked with an Irish accent on St. Patrick’s Day making us believe for years that she changed into a Leprechaun for that one day.  I have amazing memories of time with my mom and I’m sure the kids will have memories like that of me.

The reason I bring this up?  On the drive to the lake, we have to go over the “whee!” bump which is nothing more than a hill in the road that if crossed while accelerated (above the safe speed set by the law) you fly over it, your stomach drops and everyone yells “whee!” But me?  I won’t let him do that while I’m in the car because I’m deathly afraid he’s going to crash.  You can’t see what’s on the other side of the hill.  But the boy?  He “knows what he’s doing” or so he says.  After seeing the tire marks and the new sign at the establishment just past the “whee!” bump I stated, “I bet that guy thought he knew what he was doing to!”

But on Sunday?  All the kids piled in the car with the boy because I refuse to speed up to go over the “whee!” bump.  My dad would’ve been all over it and my mother, nagging.

My father and I used to purposefully tease my mother just to get a rise out of me.  (I know. I’m horrible.  But it was so much fun to see her reaction!)

And now?  The boy and Matthew do the same thing to me and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve apologized to my mother.  Again, Mom… I am sooooo sorry.

But despite all of this?  My father made sure that my mother was happy.  He catered to her.  It was her decision on where to plant the flowers and he would make it happen.  She designed the house when they remodeled and he made it happen.  Mom supervised on big projects (except for painting and staining, that always has been and continues to remain her job) and Dad made it happen.  Dad made sure that Mom was happy.  My brother and I knew it as he was very clear about it.

The boy?  Does the same thing for me, right down to the painting and staining.  That’s my job.

And remember my meltdown over the begonias that arrived as bulbs and not flowering like I expected?  The conversation the boy and I had was the exact same one that my father and mother would’ve had.

There are so many more similarities that I could point out, but we’d be here all night and seeings how It’s after one in the morning and I have to work in the morning, I’ll end it here with a difference…

Mom was always the first to head to bed while dad stayed up working and I can tell you that the boy sent his nightly text over two hours ago alerting me that he was headed for bed…

But seriously, short of my Dad channeling Dave Ramsey, the boy and my father are twins and I am becoming my mother.  Which, really?  If I’m truly honest with myself?

My parents are celebrating 34 years of marriage this year…I couldn’t think of a better woman to turn into nor could I think of a better man to fall in love with.

Until next time…