My daughter chose to spend Mothers Day with another MOM!

• Sitting here on Mothers Day, I get flowers, cards and phone-calls from all of my children and step-children except one. The day is nearly over and I’m thinking Oh well, she is a forgetful thing sometimes. I’ll really rub it in when she does remember. All of a sudden ,I get a text-message of all things, saying  Happy Mom’s Day. How Rude! Then it goes on to say that she chose to spend MY Mothers Day with someone else’s Mom! Now I admit that I wasn’t the perfect mother. As a nurse I would sometimes be at the hospital with a patient and miss out on a school presentation. I slept through her birthday one time. I was strict and overbearing with some things. I was a neat freak and she was a slob which came to blows on occasion.  Looking back, I was not as emotionally available as I believe now that she needed me to be. She often took a back seat with my attention because her brother was always soaking up my energy with negative attention. She was obviously not comfortable with the constant girlie,  frilly clothes and patent leather shoes that I would stuff her fat little feet into. As soon as she could get away with it she dressed for shock value and to get under my skin. She was my first and I assumed that she would be just like me and like the things I did. I was wrong on so many levels!
• She was, in my defense, the kind of teenager that inspires horror stories! She came home one day and announced that witchcraft was her new thing!  Although that didn’t last long  believe me, with her copper red hair and eyes that matched, she could look the part if she tried. Stubborn and angry almost from birth, this kid came into this world with one agenda. To act and do the total opposite of everything I tried to teach her.  Trust me, this heifer was mean. Not just to me, but to anybody! At one point in her partying days,I thought all was lost. The only thing I could do was pray and avoid talking to her or responding to her antics. I talked, yelled, pleaded, lectured, and bribed until I was exhausted, to rolling eyes, snide comments, the famous silent stare that said, “I’m standing here but I’m not listening to you”.
• I remember coming home from work and asking her to get me a pan of water to soak my aching feet. She went ballistic on how gross it was that I spent all of my time with those stinking sick people.  How they couldn’t pay her enough to be a nurse.  How I was a rotten mother and she shouldn’t have to LA. LA.  LA.   She was rude, rebellious , and lazy.   No-one would have thought she was my child!  It is not fair that some how I did all the right things during my pregnancy and they send me home with somebody-else’s kid! There was no way in my mind that this hard hearted, self-centered little brat could be mine! What did I do that was so wrong. For Pete’s sake I could have been one of those mothers that strapped her kids to a car seat and drove them  off in the river..However, knowing mine, they would have floated. LOL.    This kid was in no way the troublemaker that her little brother was .  She was a silent, sneaky, belligerent type.
• To date, she has surprised and thrilled me. She didn’t go to prison, nor did she join an occult. She has actually worked hard to carve out her own road .  She didn’t take the one I had planned for her, she did it her way. I in turn have learned to deal with the fact that my kids were never going to be mini Me’s   no matter how hard I tried.I really thought since she had finally after two other careers, chosen to follow in my footsteps and go into the medical profession, that we had connected and become friends. But now she chooses to spend mothers day with someone else’s mom.  should I be hurt, or angry?  ….Should I beat myself up for not being all the mom I think I could have?  …. I begin to read on……..( ” I can’t leave right now, because one of my Angels is close to death ….   and there is no-one else that will sit with her and hold her hand…. She is one of my special Angels, and after living this long and spending her life taking care of others, I cannot let her die alone in this place )……………
• Wow . Can you feel the pride as it wells up inside me?  They didn’t  give me the wrong kid after all !    What God gave me was ,a child that was determined to fulfill the destiny that he had planned for her. Despite being born to a floundering new mom ,who thought she had all of the answers. A mom who thought sometimes ,that she had somehow failed in training this kid in her image and with her ideals. Instead, she has come into herself and found her calling.  My child, now a woman, who despite her knowing that her own Mom might be disappointed, she follows her heart and finds herself right where God always planned for her to be.  Happy Mother’s Day to me. My kids are good people!   Despite all my blunders, I still have great kids.         No better present than that .