Being a mom

One of the joys of being a parent is when your child -- your grownup child -- calls to tell you about the new job they've accepted, and that they negotiated for the salary they wanted and got it. And you get to congratulate them and mean it. It'll require a move back to the city where she went to high school and college -- and from which she longed to escape a few years ago -- but that's a good thing at this point in her life.

We were talking about where she's going to live --and knowing the area, I said, "You'll need to be careful about some of those areas...I don't want you raped or shot when you get home at night.."

To which she emphatically said, "MOOOOOOMMMMM."

Meaning "Shut up. I'm plenty old enough to make those kinds of decisions for myself and I'm smart enough to be careful since I don't want to be raped or shot either."

And she is, too.

But I've been looking at photo albums -- four big boxes worth -- that came the week before Christmas. They chronicle my parents' lives, from long before they were married until 1999.

Here's the story: My brother and I got them a year ago -- three weeks before Mother died -- from the storage unit where we'd put furniture and household items right after Daddy died so suddenly in 1999 and we had to move her out of their senior community apartment into a nursing facility. Over the years we'd swapped out things from that unit into her room, or when one of us was going to be there long enough, sorted through some boxes, gave some stuff to the kids, threw some away.

The books had been sitting there all this time, though, and I was worried about mice and bugs, so I sent them home with him (he drove) so he could ship them to me.

So as I've unpacked them, I've looked at them. Here is my mother as a 20-something school teacher in Wisconsin. My dad playing Cyrano de Bergerac in college. Me as a newborn, a gawky teen, a very young bride. My brother in his 1970s Burt Reynolds look-alike phase. My daughter as a babe in my arms, an eighth-grader with one of those awful curly perms, a beautiful young woman.

My mother must have felt this way when she looked at those photos of me and my brother through all those growing-up and young adult years, or when we'd call to tell her and Daddy about our new job, a big award, or a move to another state, or a troubled marriage.

Once a mom, always a mom. Or a dad. No matter how old your child is, they're still your child.

They were better than I am about not giving unsolicited advice or cautionary words. Oh, I know they wanted to on many occasions, partly because we talked about their feelings and opinions at some point long after the incidents, partly because I knew my folks had good sense and good advice even if I didn't want to hear it.

And I've been much better about it since last summer when I realized that I have friends who are my daughters' ages and I certainly don't ask my friends the sorts of questions I'd asked my children, nor do I give them unsolicited opinion about how they should be living their lives and making their decisions! That was another one of those lightbulb moments -- when the light finally goes on in your brain and clearly illuminates your actions and words for exactly what they are. And you go "Oh my. I was acting like THAT?"

But they're going to have to allow me a slip now and then, like the one I made last night about safe areas. I AM a mom. She IS my babygirl. Who'll be 31 next month.

*sigh*

To my credit, I shut up about it right then. I'm proud of myself.

Even if I have been looking online for apartments in safe neighborhoods and sending her links.

Old habits die hard. Especially the mom ones.