My mom

Well, I've given you some insight on my dad and I and now it's time to focus on mom.

It really is a completely different story.  As far as I can remember, mom never really played with me.  Dad would always read me a bed time story, but I can't remember mom ever doing such.  I also remember dad would get up with me when I was sick.....like vomiting sick.  He would carry me to the bathroom and wash me down, clean my bed, redress it and lay me back down.  I don't ever remember my mom doing that.  Now it may be that she would get sick thinking about others get sick.  I know that's part of the reason because she would never be around dad when he was sick either.

I would always want someone to play with me.  I usually played by myself in my room.  I was a loner.  An only child. 

Some positive things that I learned from mom: 

I learned to cook.  Although, to this day, Jon usually cooks supper.  But I do have a thing for baking.  I love to bake desserts, or any other meal that is required to cook in the oven.  She taught me how to bake, cut up vegetables, be ahead of schedule when guests come for dinner, make everything look nice.  I loved having other people over.  I grew up way too soon, so I would stay at the dinner table and listen to all the grown-up conversations. 

I learned to be polite and have good table manners. 

I also learned that church is very important.  We never skipped church unless I was sick or all of us was sick.  It just didn't happen in our family. 

I learned to love music.  My dad played guitar, my mom played banjo and I played piano.  We also made a pretty decent trio of singers.  We would learn 5-6 songs, dad would sing bass, mom, soprano and I would learn the alto part.  We traveled to different churches to sing for their services.  Mom also volunteered once to work with a choir at a dying church.  That went on for quite some time.  She was also a part of a ladies quartet that would sing for other churches as well.

Mom and I have always butted heads, though, on a lot of different topics.  She would have one view and I would consistently go to the other view.  Sometimes just to butt heads with her and be defiant, but other times I truly had a reason. 

Mom was overprotective of me.  I was never allowed to go anywhere.  Even in high school.  My other friends would ask me to go to a football game with them and I was never permitted to go.  They soon stopped asking.  This led to a rebellious stage for me.  One of my friends' mother actually lied for me so that I could go to the movies with her daughter.  We made it a double-date.  If my mom had known that, she would have had a very large cow.  The other mom just felt bad for me.....I was a junior at the time!

When I was a junior in college, I emailed her to let her know of my upcoming junior qualifying recital.  I gave her one month advance notice.  Two days before my concert, she emailed me and told me that they weren't going to come to my first professional concert....that there was something going on at church that they weren't going to miss.  I mentioned that I was from Franklin....well, I was going to school at WCU, only 25 minutes away.  I was heart-broken that they didn't come.  My piano teacher was mad and was insisting that she called them to tell them how disappointed she was in them.  I didn't want her to do that, since that would only make the tensions worse at the time.

As I was planning to leave WCU and transfer to Valdosta State in GA, I had to go to a counselor to talk through my fears of telling my parents that I was leaving.  I was really stressed out during those days.  Once I did tell them, it went much better than I thought it would, but I lay all the facts down in front of them....including that I was serious in my relationship with Jon and that I needed to move to be closer to him.  That move proved to be much better for me than I ever expected it would!

As I was in GA for 1 1/2 years, anytime they would go to FL for a vacation or to see my grandmothers, they would NEVER tell me that they were passing through.  I literally lived 5 minutes off the interstate.  Again, I felt like I was not good enough for them....that they didn't miss me or that they didn't care to have any kind of relationship with me.

Once I moved to New Bern, after Jon and I were married, and I graduated from VSU, they never once came to visit.  It was only when I was expecting Mackenzie that they took any interest.  They didn't visit with me until I had her in the hospital.  Mom stayed one week with me after delivery and "helped" around the house.  Now, dad had jumped in right off the bat and helped with dishes and cleaning and stuff like that.  I think mom might have made one meal for us.  Jon was the one to come home after being at work all day and would fix supper for all of us.  That was the last time she had visited with us in New Bern. 

I still feel like the only reason she comes to visit is to see Mackenzie.  I can understand part of that, but if it weren't for Mackenzie, she would never come visit.  Even on my birthdays, I rarely feel like she's there for me.  She once got upset with me because we didn't come visit her in Franklin....we had been visiting with her since Mackenzie was born.  Anytime we got time off from school, we would travel to Granite Falls and then to Franklin making our holidays non-existant from all the road trips.  Not to mention the dangers of travelling with a baby in the backseat for 6+ hours on the road!  Oh....and if they DID come to visit, it would be on the strangest days/times.  We would finally have Mackenzie in her bed for an afternoon nap and they would "show up" at 2:00 pm when we were able to get some down time.  So they would knock on the door, and all Hell would break loose.  Mac would come running out of her room, no nap, and we were frazzled and annoyed.  No phone calls to warn us, or ask us if that was ok, nothing.  I finally told her about my feelings.  I'm very happy I made that decision.  She started calling from there on out....to make sure that it was ok for a visit.

Yep.....it's a very strange relationship now.  They are very odd to me.  They travel an hour and twenty minutes to go to a church in Asheville.  They have since bought three Harley Davidson motorcylces, which, if you knew my parents at all, it's a very hard concept to follow....them having bikes.  Mom didn't like riding behind dad, so they got her a bike as well.  It's just weird.

Weird is a perfect word to sum up our relationship!!