How To Avoid Turning into Your Mother: The Anti Mother's Day Gift

When I was a teenager, sitting around the adults and listening to them chat, I remember hearing them talk about turning into their mothers. Back in the day, I had no idea what they were talking, and then, laughing about. I think I reached the age of understanding what it meant to become your mother, when I was in my early twenties. I vowed not to let it happen, and I thought I was doing well in trying not to become her.

I love my mother, respect my mother and would not trade her for another. However, I have never had the desire to be my mother, or even to resemble her. But somehow, it has happened. I not only have managed to age to the point of looking like her, I catch myself doing and saying things she would say. I managed not noticing the metamorphosis happening for a long while, but finally it hit me when my husband took my dremel tool and broke it. I said it. I actually turned to him and said "I can't have anything of my own." That small sentence was, and still is, what my mother says when anything breaks or goes missing. I always hated hearing her say it and as I grew older, my siblings and I would laugh when she said it. The best memory of hearing her say those seven words, was back in the 80's when my father somehow managed to mow down her entire flowerbed, he said he thought the flowers were weeds...and the rest is history.

At this point in my life, it may be too late for me, but I may be able to help those who come after me. I've come up with some guidelines to follow in the attempt of being true to yourself and not becoming your mother.

1. Never describe an old boyfriend as the One Who Got Away (both my mother and mother-in-law have one)

2. Never collect plastic bags, paper bags, or those twisty ties that come on bread packages.

3. Never buy, accept as a gift, or create yourself, a handmade anything that disguises toilet paper. You know what I'm talking about, you've probably seen those crocheted dolls that the toilet paper fits inside. (actually, my younger sister has a funnier story about one of those....our grandmother gave her one as a gift when she was 8).