I was writing in my journal tonight and my mind wandered to childhood years. I just thought I'd post a little section of it that some of my siblings might remember or at least find interesting...
When you become
a mom you also realize as you tell your children things that you don’t want
them to do, that you did exactly those same things when you were a kid. And you might feel a little guilty…but not
enough to not tell them those things.
The tricky part is when there’s proof and the kids find it. I remember this picture we used to wave in my
mom’s face sometimes when she’d tell us our shorts were too short and to go
change. It was her and her best friend
in these super short white shorts and we’d start a little campaign with “What I’m
wearing is NOTHING like what you used
to wear!” You’d have to know my mom to
fully get this because she’s so modest and sweet but this one would really get
her going and we knew it… “That was a MARCHING BAND UNIFORM!” Followed by us
saying something like, “Oh so if I join the marching band I can wear-“ but we
didn’t get very far with that because she’d interrupt with, “Ha! Yes, if you joined the marching band you can wear whatever you want. I’d sure like to see that.” Yeah that argument fell flat real fast. It was pretty safe for her too. We didn’t
even have a marching band…
You know eventually that picture
went missing. Couldn’t find it anywhere. I just liked to get my mother fired up
sometimes, it was fun to tease her because she is so patient and it was so hard
to make her mad. There isn’t a mean bone
in her body. Even when she was really fed up we knew she didn’t mean it. One of the things we really liked to do was
play tag with my Dad in the evening.
This was in the house, and it was just this ongoing little game that
wasn’t too rowdy, the whole point was you didn’t want to be “it” when you went
to bed. Well, okay, sometimes it really
did get rowdy, but not always! Dad would
lay on the floor near the doorway and we’d have to get past him to get to bed
so there were always various tactics in use like pretending you weren’t playing
anymore and nonchalantly strolling past, waiting to see if he’d fall asleep or
forget, or run through when he wasn’t looking, etc. Sometimes these games would stretch quite
some time past bedtime and mom was ready to go to bed. She couldn’t sleep unless the entire house
was quiet so she’d have to wait for everyone else to go to bed too. When she got REALLY tired of waiting and telling
us we needed to be done and go to bed now, she’d eventually get the broom out
(that’s when we knew she was serious and we needed to end the game quick) and
start chasing us around the living room.
While we knew that meant we needed to go to bed it was just the most
hilarious thing to see and we’d be laughing uproariously still trying to get
one last “tag” in on the way to bed. It
was so funny ‘cause what was she going to do once she caught us with the broom?” She wasn’t going to hit anyone with it, it
was more like she was trying to sweep us out of the room with it :). I guess you just have to know her. And when she was mad at us she’d call us
names like, “You little stinker!” That
was the most common one. Or, “You little
munchkin.” It didn't engender much fear.
I actually said that to my husband the other day. I had cleaned the closet and done this really awesome job of organizing everything, and he went through it and pulled out all this stuff I had just put in there and LEFT it on the living room floor. When I went to clean the living room and saw what he'd done to it I hollered, "You little stinker!" and started on this mini rampage. He didn't even know I was talking to him. Eventually he went, "What, oh, you mean me?!" Yeah, thanks mom :)
