I just had the most delicious lunch break. And, ironically, it didn't involve food. I'm not overly fond of using food words like 'delicious', 'scruptious', 'delectable', 'savory', etc to describe other areas of life. I'm not even fond of using them to describe food...reading my Quick Cooking magazine is always a balance of searching for helpful recipes while dodging the gag-me-with-a-spoon, overly-flowery descriptions. Still, delicious actually works in this instance. I got to talk with my mom for a whole hour (while eating popcorn).
Mom and I have had quite the interesting relationship. She was my teacher for 13 years of homeschooling, my piano teacher for 9, plus all the other roles mothers have. As the oldest child of an oldest child, she's a perfectionist to boot. She's completely gorgeous (if I look half as good as she does when I'm her age I'll consider myself a lucky gal), good at just about everything she does, and has an incredible marriage with my dad. She also has a willpower that defies anyone to tell her she can't do something. Once, when I was little, she watched a bunch of us chillins attempting, unsuccessfully, to walk on stilts. She teased us about our lack of ability, to which we retorted we were doing way better than she could. (Bad move.) She marched over, took the stilts, and proudly marched all around the backyard before returning, hopping off, and sticking out her tongue. I later learned that she had never walked on stilts before in her life. That memory still brings a smile to my face.
Still, we haven't always gotten along. As the oldest of the oldest of the oldest, I am also a perfectionist. The thing is, Mom and I could never quite agree on what we needed to be perfectionistic over. So while I worked hard at acing homework assignments, sports, and AWANA verses, she emphasized the necessity of dusting, vacuuming, washing floors, cooking, and practicing my instruments. Oh the Saturday afternoons when, once again, I had cut corners dusting and, once again, got caught...it wasn't pretty.
When I was really little (couldn't have been more than 5) I came to the conclusion that if I boldly declared that my life was totally unfair and ran out of the room, ala Marsha Brady, Mom would be forced to see my point. This did not work...not even a little bit. (It worked in the Brady Bunch and Little House on the Prairie--what went wrong??) Now it's probably one of my most embarrassing moments...especially since I chose to pitch my fit with company in the house.
Now I'm married and living in another state. Our conversations are becoming more rare as I work full-time. She does much of her private teaching in the evening, so lining up our schedules is difficult. When we are blessed with time to talk, I marvel at just how wise she is. She sees things for how they are, how they actually work. Mom looks for the good in people and seeks to build them up however she can. We grow closer every year. I depend on her for so much now, and no longer take for granted the hundreds of thousands of hours she took to raise us, train us, and slowly let us become independent adults. Now that I'm independent, there are times when all I want is to be her little girl again.
All of that to say, spending an hour with my mom is an incredible blessing, and I positively delight in being her daughter.
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