"I hope you have one just like you"
Your parents will utter this, yell this, say this... either in humor, in anger or in frustration, at least once in your life.
Folks, this is not a wish. It's a curse that comes true. One day, little beings that you spawned will be, like a beautifully wrapped karmic gift to your parents, YOU. Utterly you. And suddenly, you'll open your mouth and realize that your parents just came out.
Often now, as I open my mouth to talk to my kids, either my mother, my father... or both come out of my mouth. My mother loves this. She LOVES to see me with my kids. She laughs, and not inwardly, as she sees me shaking my head at my daughter's strewn about socks or digging through my son's black hole of a backpack and saying things like "what am I talking to? A brick wall?"
Exhibit A: William's locker. My mother was visiting recently and offered to walk into the school with William to grab something from his locker before we headed out for the day. So I warned her, "hey ma? You remember my locker or backpack or closet or really... anything of mine? Yeah, that's his locker. Be careful." Apparently, she jumped back a little when he began opening it and he laughed asking "Oma? What are you doing?" My mother replied, "look, your mom told me about your locker." Before he could be offended, however, my mom assured him that NOTHING could shock her since he was basically, ME. She'd already been through this, kids. About 34 years ago, she had seen a middle school locker and stood, half horrified/half amused, at the destruction her daughter could fit in a tiny locker that barely holds 4 school books. Unfortunately, his locker is bigger. And thus, so is the resulting natural disaster it contains.
The first time I saw his locker, I suddenly understood my mother SO MUCH BETTER. Dude, I think there are live beings in that locker. Hidden. Somewhere. Beneath the piles of "oh I think I turned this in", crumpled "shoot, I don't know what that is, ma" and the detritus of a year of assignments he somehow NEVER throws away even after he doesn't need them, I believe there is probably something living. And we'll never know. Because there's too much shit in there. Good Lord Above Holy Mary Mother of God, that locker. The first time he opened it my foot was literally bruised from a binder that weighs more than he does, full of assignments he can't remember, falling on it. Then I had to help him dig through an enormity of what looks to me like garbage, but he insists he needs it, to find a crumpled up, half finished map of Egypt that he needed to finish RIGHT NOW.
"Jeez, William! What is going on in there!" I exclaimed, "I think there's something alive in there! How the hell do you expect to find anything?!" And then I stopped. My mother had just emerged from me. And as he looked at me, bemused, trying with all his might not to roll his eyes at his crazy mother... I realized, he is me. And I'm my mother.
Exhibit B: Lizzy's hair. Now I know why my mother constantly threatened to shave my head. I know why she gave up and cut it so short she could barely cram a little clip onto it (but oh she did). I get it now.
The other morning, I'm trying to brush it because she actually WANTS a hairdo today (which is a massive miracle in and of itself). With each stroke of the brush she screams "OW!" so loud her poor brother's ears seem on the verge of bleeding and she jerks her head around to glare at me as if I've killed her cat. "OW!" "sorry" "OW!" "sorry, I'm trying to be gentle" "OOOOWWWW! GOD MOM!!" "WELL SHIT LIZZY! If you actually BRUSHED your hair after a shower and LET me put it up each night like I ask, it wouldn't be so tangled now WOULD IT?! I'm just gonna shave it all off!"
Folks I haven't combed through a quarter of the mass of platinum that sits on her head yet. Not even a quarter of it. And we're both already exhausted. You see, she has been blessed with not thick, but dense hair. So many individual strands packed onto her lovely head that it is unruly, easily tangled and you can barely get a rubber band around it. Add to that the fact that she has an EXTREMELY sensitive scalp. She can't help it. So do I. So does William. Our family hairdresser informed me that we all flinch continuously as she brushes our hair.
When it's not about the tangles, it's about asking her to do something with it. "Lizzy, brush your hair," I say on a daily basis, to which I always receive the answer, "I just did". At which point I'm obliged to point out that running the brush lightly over the top layer of the sides of her hair that she can see in the mirror does NOT constitute brushing. I see her from the back and it looks like a bird's nest. Or like she caught it in a blender. But, like me at her age, she could care less. She's happy to go about the world unkempt, jelly stains on her shirt, hair looking like some mangled muppet, mismatched outfit and mouth unwiped from the breakfast just consumed. And like my mother, I insist that she at least "not look like an orphan" before she leaves the house.
Exhibit C: The "it's a sign you love someone and want to return" effect. My mother always says I leave stuff behind at her house because I want to return. Kids, Lizzy must want to return to every place she visits. I can't help but laugh at that awesome "oh my god... let me think real quick" dazed look on her face when I pick her up from anywhere and ask, "Lizzy do you have your..." (insert anything here - lunch bag, headphones, hoodie, shoes, socks, homework, folder, sketchbook). Her enormous eyes grow even wider, her mouth opens slightly and I know... she has no clue. The hoodie is likely on the school playground somewhere, she probably set her lunch bag on the floor while getting her backpack and left it there, her socks are flung off immediately wherever she arrives so they're at the last friend's house she visited and her sketch book is likely stuffed into the desk that closely resembles the state of her brother's locker because she pulled it out to sketch instead of doing the math assignment she finds "boring". And I know this, because that was me. And I assume the look I get from her when I say "Jesus, Liz, you'd forget your head if it weren't attached" is an exact replica of the face that met my mother when she uttered the same.
Frighteningly enough, although I no longer scream at hair-brushing, my desk at work is tidy, I prefer to put everything in its place, I LOVE to clean out things and throw away what I don't use... the one part that hasn't changed is my ability to leave things places and lose them. Keys hanging on the hook in a public bathroom? Check. Hoodie left next to me on the banquette at a restaurant? Check. Lunch/coffee/breakfast/wallet/license left behind resulting in 1-2 "turning back" moments before I get to work? Check. Frantic search for my phone because I set it down "somewhere" as I wandered from Lizzy's room to William's to the kitchen to the bathroom in the morning? Check. Poor Lizzy. She'll be 45 and still doing this.
Exhibit D: Does she REALLY have eyes in the back of her head? William and I were having a morning of exchanging less than pleasantries the other day and I'd had enough. I told him he could take his long face and his shitty attitude back up the stairs and come back down when he could manage to not take his sleepless night out on me. I turned back to the breakfast I was making and as he walked back up the stairs, there was something... a pause in his walk, the sound of his shuffling, the way he sniffed... something, and I knew. "Don't roll your eyes at me, either!" I shouted. He turned, open mouthed in amazement. I answered before he asked, "yes, I know you did. I have eyes in the back of my head. I KNOW you." I could see him analyzing the probability of the impossible being possible. Could I REALLY see with my back turned? Did I truly know him SO well that I could FEEL him rolling his eyes?
I couldn't help it, I laughed. I remember wondering just HOW my mother knew I had rolled my eyes. With her back turned. Rooms away. On the phone long distance. She knew. And now I know. Not from some magical mom powers, either. No, because I know exactly when I would roll my eyes at what I had just said. And he is me.
You will have one just like you folks. You will. It's god's way of rewarding your parents for their infinite patience with you. It is. It's this lovely little karmic circle that ensures you will utter exactly what your parents did, you will understand them better and, if you're like my mother and me, you'll laugh your ASSES off together about how life just repeats itself.
I have two little "Mariskas" running around. Two forgetful, unorganized, messy, funny, crazy, insecure yet dying not to be like anyone else, scattered but driven, creative but analytical, argumentative, eye-rolling, stubborn makers of messy lockers, strange potions, half-cleaned rooms and silly games. My house will be full of clothes strewn about as if they were stripping on their way to their rooms. My car will be full of forgotten permission slips and crumpled up homework. I'll keep napkins in the car to clean off the Ovaltine or jelly or pancake syrup they neglected to wipe from their faces. I'll look forward to the laughs and yet fear the annual cleaning out of backpacks only to find pencils they claimed they lost, permission slips I never signed, gum already chewed and unidentifiable objects better suited to my trash can. And I will call my mom... and we'll laugh. And I'll share these stories with my kids because they LOVE it when I read old blogs to them.
And one day, should they become parents, I'll read this to them again. And they'll laugh at their daughter's unkempt head, tornado of a bedroom and fairy potions. And they'll laugh at their son's locker or eye-rolling or forgotten assignments.
I hope you have one just like you. I know I got two of me.
