Mom

My mom is coming.

She'll be here on Wednesday and this thought cheers me immeasurably. I can hardly even begin to tell you why.

It's not like she can make the pain go away, or the end come sooner, or carry this weight herself. It's not like Eric isn't doing everything he can on his own or comfort me, he certainly has been so far. He's been absolutely fantastic.

But.

There's something about your mom. To have her close by. To rest your head on her shoulder and curl into her side, to metaphorically climb into her lap and have your hair stroked. Without words she tells you that everything will be alright and she'll probably tell me that "This too shall pass.".

I hate that phrase. It's so smug and yet, it's always correct. Every damned bad thing that ever happens to you will eventually fade. Unfortunately that knowledge doesn't save you in the present or blunt the pain of living through it any.

I'm not an easy daughter to have. I argue with my youngest sister over who is the black sheep in the family (I still insist that it's me.) and who causes the most trouble (Probably my brother physically and me emotionally.). I've hurt my mother terribly over the years, just as she has hurt me. It's part of growing up. It's painful to discover your own separate identity, to discover that they just don't know as much, have different experiences, different outlooks. It's hard to look back on your youth and wish they'd done thus and so, but they didn't necessarily know any better, they didn't have the resources that you do, they were younger and that's just how things were done back then.

Over the years, I've had to accept that my parents weren't able to parent me in the way I'd have liked them to. Such a shocker, I know! That they aren't automatically wiser people than I am just because they've lived longer. In many cases I have had more or more varied life experiences than they have and it has taught me many things. Mainly it's taught me that they've done the best they could with what they had and that that is all that any parent can hope for. I'll experience this again as Caitlin (and Emma and Logan) gets older and discovers that I am not the font of all wisdom and that I've made dumb mistakes and that I haven't parented her (them) in the way that she (they) would have liked.

I hope they can forgive me and I can forgive them as often as I have been forgiven.

That's the one thing that my mother has shown me over and over again: forgiveness.

I can be a serious pain in the ass (Color you shocked!), but she forgives me. I hope she even sometimes understands me.

But she'll be here in three days time and when she gets here, I'm going to curl up in her lap (as much as any 38 year old woman, hugely pregnant with twins, can), rest my head on her shoulder and feel comforted.

I miss you mom.

One of my favorite pictures, from August 2005.