Am I Really Just Like My Mother? | Parenting

The other day my mother told me that of the six children she has, I am the most like her.

Um…what?

“Out of all my kids,” she said, “you remind me the most of myself.”

I had to sit and digest her comment for a minute. I mean, I adore my mother. Truly I do. She's sweet, optimistic, kind-hearted and loving. And only a tad insane.

But let’s not kid ourselves here. Who wouldn’t cringe just a little bit at the idea that she is just like her mother? It’s often the low-blow, deal-breaking accusation of spousal arguments. Any husband who tells his wife she’s just like her mother can expect to sleep on the couch. While the couch is waiting at the curb for Goodwill. In the rain.

My husband has never been so foolish as to come out and say those dreaded five words. But when he really wants to irk me (and obviously does not want to get any that night), he calls me Carol. My mother’s name. Touché, honey. Hope it doesn’t rain tonight.

My mother doesn’t know how to drive a car. No, not figuratively. She literally never got her driver’s license. And while I don’t understand how in God’s name she managed to raise the six of us without going Shining on us, sometimes I think the world is a safer place without her behind the wheel; she recently backed her golf cart into a central Florida canal and had to walk home barefoot because her flip flops were lost somewhere in the depths of the murky, snake-and-gator-infested water.

She is a reality TV junkie (and by junkie I mean she brings reality TV stars into conversations as if they are people we actually know better than we know some of our blood relatives). She’s also an avid bird-watcher, and will gleefully report various bird species sightings to me as if celebrities and politicians were perching on her feeders and splashing around in her birdbath. And she never leaves home without her metal detector. I think she’s convinced she will somehow unearth either Jimmy Hoffa or the lost city of Atlantis somewhere in the Georgia hills just beyond her backyard. She doesn’t drink, she doesn’t sleep, and on any given day she’s in the middle of reading about eight different books.

Needless to say, I am none of these things. I don’t consider myself especially friendly. The very idea of being car-less for even a few hours turns me into a shaky, irritable mess. I hate reality TV, would sleep for twelve hours a night if I could, and when I’m not pregnant (like I am now) I can usually wait until 5 to crack open a beer. Usually.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that my mother was in fact giving me a tremendous compliment. This is a woman of unending optimism. She is the poster child for not sweating the small stuff. I can’t think of a time when I’ve heard her complain, her imagination rivals that of any nine-year-old, and her skin is fantastic. Certainly not the fine-lined, sun-damaged saddlebag mine is becoming.

So how am I like her? And when, exactly, did I turn into my mother? When do any of us become the woman who reared us, who taught us about the world, answered our questions, grounded us, annoyed and embarrassed us until we grew up and eventually realized she knows a lot more about the world than we ever gave her credit for?

It kind of creeps up on us; this metamorphosis from normal, functioning person into a mom who goes on rants about picking up toys, eating vegetables and brushing teeth.  One day you can actually relax for a few minutes without noticing the graham cracker crumbs on the carpet or chocolate fingerprints on the wall; the next day, you are a 'Mommy'. You clean. You nag. You do more laundry than a prison inmate. You stand before your unsuspecting children with your hands on your hips and threaten to move out of the house if you step on one more bleeping Lego piece.

And the older we get and the more children we have, the more we appreciate the sacrifices, the frustration, the unending chaos our mothers put up with for the eighteen-plus years of having us in their homes. The more we understand our own capacity to love our children despite them drawing on the carpet, biting each other like rabid wolverines, and attempting to put objects into the toilet that obviously do not belong there.... the more we understand our own mothers’ love for us.

That is what I hope my mother meant: I am like her because I love my children and I show them every day that I will always love them, regardless of the crap they pull (metaphorical and actual).

And now that I think about it, I kinda like birds, too….

Learn More About Rebekah Hunter Scott's book "Motherhood is Easy"