Mother Of The Bride

When Becky was here a while back, she gave us the news that she is going to be getting married. We are very excited and happy for her. We have not met her young man yet, but will when we go to Georgia this winter.  She is very nervous about her Dad meeting The Guy. Dad is just not good at meeting The Guy.  Lord knows, he tries, but somehow it usually doesn't go well on that first meeting. 

Becky and The Guy have set their wedding date for February 20, 2011 and they have reserved a very nice venue for the wedding. She is sending me links for florists and musicians.

I have started looking at mother of the bride dresses online. I know it is kind of early for that, but I remember when my youngest daughter, Emily, got married, we looked for weeks and weeks for a dress. It's not that I am that picky, it's just that I don't think the people who make mother of the bride dresses are very realistic about what a 57 year old woman looks like in a dress. 

(Here I am as mother of the groom in 1995. The red dress worked fine back then. It was a less formal wedding at a church in Smyna, Ga.)

Have you ever seen some of the stuff they have to offer?  Well, let me show you. 

This dress is actually listed as a mother of the bride dress. I don't know anyone who has a daughter old enough to get married who looks like that, or who could actually wear that dress. I can't even imagine it in a size 24.

This one is a little better, at least I can picture it in a plus size, but does it really have to be that shiney? Do they really think a large woman wants to draw that much attention to herself? I don't know how formal the wedding is going to be, but if the occasion calls for it, this dress may be ok. Just wish it didn't glow.

 

(and here I am as mother of the bride in 1997. The wedding was at a small chapel in Gatlinburg, TN. )

And yes, this one was in the category of mother of the bride, too. It shows a bit more of the gozongas than I would like. Who are these people who would wear something like that to their daughter's wedding?

I think this one would make me frumpy. What do you think? Or am I really too picky?

I DID find a couple of dresses I like. This one, if it is a more formal event, I think would look real nice on a "big boned" lady like me. I like the mint green, but I wear a lot of pink, too. 

And for less formal, I might just pick this. It would depend on how it looks in person when I tried it on. At least the people who own that website are using a plus size model so you can get a somewhat realistic idea of how that dress would look on a larger woman.

And though I don't think this one would be right for a wedding, I do like the looks of it--except that I know something that clingy wouldn't look good on me. And there is that cleavage thing again, too.

So, there you have it. All of these dresses were found in the "mother of the bride" category online. I think I need help.

Where Does The Time Go?

I'm sitting here tonight, wondering how in the world it got to be October 6th already, and thinking I only have 18 days before we leave the North Rim to go to Alabama. I am psyched for traveling again, and really glad that I'll be in a place where I'll see water every day. I am happy that I will see my daughters and my grandson again soon. But on the same token, I am saddened that I will be leaving a place I love so much. Saddened that there aren't enough days to spend with friends before we go. Lonely for them already and we aren't even gone yet. 

And as I think about that, I also wonder how I got to be fifty-seven years old so fast. Where did all THAT time go. I think about the people back home in Georgia, the related ones, of course, but more often the chosen ones. People who have been my friends for years, who still love me, no matter what flaws I may have.  Amazed at how many of them I have found on Facebook, and who want to get together with me for lunch or coffee, or whatever, when I get back to town this winter. And overjoyed that I found one in particular just recently, who I have known since the 8th grade. Knowing that she was my best friend for many years, and that I have known her for more than 40, and happy that I may see her again soon.

And that kind of thinking always leads me to think of my mother. My relationship with my mother has always been shakey--I have never felt like I have accomplished quite what she wanted me to, or that she has ever approved of anything I have done. Lord knows I have tried.  But at 57, I have tried to let all that go, and just love her, no matter what, in the hope that she would do the same. Sometimes that is hard to do. Sometimes I cringe when I see her phone number in the caller ID, and sometimes I don't answer when I know it is her. Sometimes I do, hoping she will be the sweet mother I always hoped she would be. Too often, though, it's not. And I know I can't change that.  I really do try to be patient with her. She misses me--my sister tells me that she does. It's just hard to believe that when every time she calls me she loses her temper with me--whether it is something I say, or, a lot of the time, whether it is something I DON'T say. 

We have very different opinions about a lot of things, from politics to religion, and back again. Most of the time she rants on rather loudly about whatever it is that has gotten her ire up, and I just listen until she calms down. More and more often, though, if I keep my mouth shut and bite my tongue in an attempt to NOT make her mad, that just makes her mad. And I have told her over and over again, that just because we have different opinions, it doesn't mean I don't love her.  That maybe we should agree to  not discuss religion or politics, and just talk about family, and my life and her life. And forget about the rest.

Our most recent telephone conversation ended with her calling me some ugly names, and hanging up on me. And I cried like I was eight years old again. I wish I could figure out why this happens. My sister says it is because she misses me. And that she wishes I would call her more often.  And I might agree, that that is the case. But who wants to call when they know what the result will be?

I know there will come a time when I will wish that every time the phone rang it would be my mother. She is almost 82 years old, and I know how lucky I am to have had her in my life for as long as I have. I just wish she would feel lucky to have me, even if I am 2,000 miles away. Mama, do you know I love you???? do you know that you did a great job raising me? do you know that even if I didn't accomplish what you dreamed for me, that I have achieved my dreams for myself? do you know that I am lonely for you, too?

What Was Her Mother Thinking???

Jim and I were watching Good Morning America this morning, and they had some “boy band” on singing their latest hit. The name of the band doesn’t matter. And of course, there was a throng of screaming girls standing outside the studio, waving signs and looking as if they might swoon if one of those little boys walked up. The news personality or whatever it is they call them nowadays, was interviewing some of those little girls. She asked one of them how old she was, and the reply was “Eight.” Eight years old!!!

What is the mother of that girl thinking? I wondered how that little girl even knew about the band. I wondered why her mother (or her father) would take her to downtown New York to stand outside in the cold waiting to catch a glimpse of a boy band. I was shocked, thinking that when MY girls were eight years old, they wanted to be Brownies, they wanted to play on the girls’ softball team, they wanted to help me in the kitchen. IF they had a favorite singer, it was probably Kermit the Frog, singing that song about the Rainbow.

I know I am not that old, and that I am not that much of a fuddy duddy. When my daughters, who are 33 and 34 years old now, were growing up, I made sure they were dressed appropriately when they left the house. If they wanted to go to their friend Katie’s house down the street to play in the sprinkler, they were not allowed to walk down the street in their bathing suits. I didn’t let them walk to the store by themselves.

I never dropped them off at the mall. If they went to the mall, it was with me. I did not then nor do I now think that the mall is a place to socialize. It is a place to shop. With your mother. And if they went to the movies, I went with them, and sat in the same row as they did. They were not allowed to go on dates with boys until they were sixteen years old, and then they had a curfew of 10:00 p.m. And the boy had to come inside the house when they came to pick them up. And a couple of times in their dating careers, I said “absolutely not” to letting them go out with the young man when I met him. One was thrown physically out of my house for being disrespectful to my daughter in front of me.

Both of my daughters still love me and consider me to be their hero. And, they grew up to be successful, well-adjusted, happy members of society. One was an art teacher at a school for children with learning disabilities and is now assistant manager of a well-known high-end retail store; the other is a biology and special education teacher at a high school.

So, I really did find myself wondering if this little girl’s mother is using any common sense at all. If so, why is she encouraging such an obsession in a child so young? Is she living her own dreams through her child? Is she trying to give her darling daughter everything she thinks she wants?

Sometimes, I think kids ask for things they don’t really want, just to please their peers, and are hoping fervently inside that their parents will say NO. Maybe this child just wanted her mom to say no, so she could tell her friend she asked and her mom wouldn’t let her go. But sometimes, we as parents read the signals all wrong, and or we THINK this is what our child really wants, or we say YES to the most ridiculous requests because it was something we wanted when we were that age and were denied by our parents. I’m here to tell ya, folks, that just because your kid wants it, doesn’t mean they need it. And just because you CAN give them whatever it is that they want, doesn’t always mean you SHOULD. If you give them their little rock stars when they are eight, what are you going to be giving them when they are sixteen?

What Do They Really Mean When They Say I Am Their Hero?

The other day I was looking at my younger daughter Emily’s MySpace page, and saw that in the space where you can name who your heros are, she had written “My Mom”. So, I went to Rebecca’s page, and saw that she, too, had named me as her hero. I have never considered myself to be anything special, or extraordinary, so I got to thinking about what a “hero” really is, and wondered why either one of my daughters would think of me that way.

When you look at the dictionary definition of the word “hero” it is defined like this:

1. a man distinguished by exceptional courage and nobility and strength; "RAF pilots were the heroes of the Battle of Britain"
2. the principal character in a play or movie or novel or poem
3. someone who fights for a cause
4. Greek mathematician and inventor who devised a way to determine the area of a triangle and who described various mechanical devices (first century)
5. a large sandwich made of a long crusty roll split lengthwise and filled with meats and cheese (and tomato and onion and lettuce and condiments); different names are used in different sections of the United States

And in the thesaurus, suggested words for hero are

1. Brave man
2. Champion
3. conqueror
4. Idol

After looking at all the things that a hero can be thought to be, I wondered which of those things my daughters actually think of me as. So, I investigated the different meanings of each of those words suggested by the thesaurus.

Since I am certainly NOT a brave man, (and don’t consider myself to be a brave woman, either) I skipped that one just on principle. Next up, a Champion. A champion is a winner, a champ, a victor, a title holder, and a defender. To Champion something is to defend it, such as in side with, stand up for. And a defender is a supporter, a backer, a campaigner, an advocate, or a guardian. So, in the sense or meaning of Champion, yes, I could be that, since I was a single mother for most of the time I was bringing up my children, and I supported them not only financially, but emotionally, physically at times, and spiritually. I supported them in everything they attempted to accomplish, and I must say they accomplished a lot.

On to Conqueror. What does that mean? Defeator, vanquisher, subjugator, and captor. I don’t think that meaning is relavent at all. At least I hope not. Did I inadvertantly vanquish any of their dreams? Did I defeat their attempts at anything? Did I hold them captive to my desires? I guess I will never know the answer.

Last on the list is Idol. The handy thesaurus gives us icon, statue, god, diety as substitutions for that word. An icon can be a star, a model, a symbol. Am I the model of the person they want to be? Am I a symbol of what they want to achieve. Oh, I hope not. I hope they accomplish more than I have; I want more for them than that. I certainly am not a god or a diety. But, again, in the sense of the meaning of idol, as a model or a symbol, I guess that could be closer to what my girls mean when they say I am their hero.

Or maybe they think of me as crusty and cheesey and full of baloney, a hero sandwich!

Sarah and the Diabetes Scare

We went down to visit with Seth, Sarah and Michael in Wahington, D.C. We spent the night on Tuesday night and came home on Wednesday. Before we left to come home, I took Sarah shopping for Michaels school uniforms.

She has been diagnosed with gestational diabetes. The baby is due at the end of September. They prescribed glyburide for her to take. She took her pill, then we left to go to the store. While we were there, she started looking obviously distressed, so I took her out to the truck. She tested her blood sugar and it was 38! I ran over to a convenience store and got her a coke. After she drank about half of the coke, she started feeling better.

She is supposed to go back to the doctor today, so I told her to be sure to tell the doctor what happened. I think they need to either change the dosage or change the medication.

Crazy Dreams

I don’t usually write about my dreams because I rarely ever dream, or, if I do, I don’t remember them. But last night I went to bed with a terrible headache, so early after coming in from work that Jim was concerned about me. I didn’t even turn on the computer to read my e-mail. I was that sick. So, with apologies to the real people in my family who are in this story, sorry, it was just a dream.

In the dream I had last night, I was walking down the street I lived on when I was in the eighth grade, with my best friend from eighth grade. The road looked like it did then, and I looked like I did then, but my friend looked like she looks now. As a matter of fact, everything in the dream looked like it did then, except her. This is sort of what I looked like then:

We came to a place in the road where a rose bush had grown over the road, and we had to walk through it to get to where we were going. As we walked through it, the thorns on the rosebush snagged on my clothing. Donna, my friend, was helping me get untangled from the thorns. I reached for one of the canes of the rosebush, and got about 20 thorns stuck in my thumb. I said to her, “I need a tweezer to get these out.” 

So, we went to my mother’s house, which looked on the outside like it looked when I was in the eighth grade. Except, that when we walked up on the carport, instead of a regular door like my mother has, there was a sliding glass door there. The whole inside of the house was crammed with furniture, so much that my mother, who looked like she looked when I was in the eighth grade, had to move a little round wooden table so that Donna and I could slip in sideways to get into the house. 

Once inside the house, I asked my mother for a tweezer. She said there was one in the bathroom. So, I went into the bathroom. In the bathroom, I noticed that it was pouring down rain outside, and the ceiling of the bathroom was leaking, so much that there was a huge puddle of water on the floor. I also noticed that someone had re-tiled the bathroom with a beautiful tile pattern. I wondered to myself in the dream why someone would re-tile the floor but leave the roof to leak so much. I looked in the medicine cabinet for a tweezer, but there was not one there. 

I went back out to the living area, where I noticed that the ceiling was leaking heavily in there, too. I told my mother that there was no tweezer in the bathroom. She then said, “Well, if you had asked me I would have told you there was one on that little table by the door.” The one she moved so we could get in. I walked over there and got the tweezer and picked the thorns out of my thumb.

Then, I asked my mother why she had not had her roof repaired. She said, “I asked Seth to do it, and he said he would, but Dick got mad at me because I asked Seth to do it, so I told Seth not to do it, and Dick never came to do it after that.” (Seth is my son, who was not even thought of when I was in the eighth grade, and Dick is my older brother) And I said, “Well, Seth knows how to do it, and I will call him right now to come over and fix that roof.” End of dream.

So, if anyone has a clue what this all means, please let me know.