Over at BlogHer (as well as on her own blog), Laurie takes a look at daughters blogging about their moms, as a tribute to the last day of Women's History Month. This seems like a fine idea to me, so I thought I'd give it a shot.
I have an exceptional mom. She got pregnant a few months out of high school, and had and raised me alone for the first several years. Support from my dad was...limited, to put it kindly. She worked at a gas station and took care of me all by herself (with the support of her family), and I was a pretty high needs kid, prone to tantrums, not much on sleeping, talked early and often. I don't know how she kept sane. I know, looking back, that there were months in which the margin of error in her checkbook was measured in cents, but I was always taken care of, never worried, always loved.
When I was a preteen and teenager, my mom and I went through a pretty typical rocky period. It wasn't just us anymore--there was a step dad and a pesky younger brother on the scene by then--but the battle that raged at our house mostly raged between her and I. Looking back on it, I think most of the decisions she made were right, most of the things she didn't want me to do I shouldn't have done. On the other hand, I'm not sorry I did many of them anyway--I'm only sorry I gave her such a hard time about it. She did such a great job, keeping me safe but letting me figure things out on my own, forcing me to be responsible but stepping in when I needed her--it's not a balance anybody walks perfectly, but I can't think of a whole lot she could have done better.
And now that I'm an adult, and so far away, I miss my mom more than I can express. Neither one of us is a big phone talker, and even if we were, it's not the same. I'm once again amazed, though, at how strong she is. She's never given me any kind of guilt about moving so far away, or not visiting often enough, even though I know it has to be hard for her. She's never been away from someone as close to her as I am before--her own family has stayed within just a few miles of one another. But she's never tried to keep me from doing whatever it is I decide I'm going to do, including moving to Texas.
My mom is one of the things that makes me want to be a parent. If even a quarter of her natural skills for raising a child came down into my genetics, I'd be so good at it. It also scares me, though, because I know I'd never be half as patient or as constructive as she was, and I could end up with a kid as hard to handle as the one she got.