My Mom is coming to visit for a week and while I’m excited, there is a part of me that‘s a little nervous as well. This will be the first time my mother has spent time in my house since I’ve been single. Gulp. Needless to say the women in my family are a little opinionated. Hailey is eighteen and I’m still trying to boss her around, I don’t think the fact that I’m forty something is going to stop my mother from bossing me around. And because I’m the oldest, I’m going to boss right back!
Birth order is a funny thing and I think that is what is making me most nervous. I am the oldest of five children so I’m a little bit bossy and always right, it’s a given, right? Well, my mother and my daughter are both only children. Not just any only children either, they are the only children their parents were blessed with after fertility struggles. So to say that the two of them are a little bossy and always right and more than a little used to getting their way would be an understatement!
I think there may be a little head butting, a little bit of “do it my way” but all in all I think it will be a wonderful visit. My mother and I have both been single parents; she understands my struggles because she lived them. I think this will be a chance for me to learn from my mother’s wisdom at a time when I’m willing to listen and learn. I am the mother I am today because of the mother my mom has always been. It’s funny how as teenagers we rebel against everything our mothers say and then twenty years later find them staring back at us from the mirror.
I remember those days when I thought I knew everything and my mother knew nothing, now the situation is reversed, I wish I had listened to my mother and I wish my daughter would listen to me. I hope that my daughter learns from our mistakes and never finds herself a single mother, but if she does I hope I have set a strong enough example for her to be ok.