sunshine0221's Diaryland Diary
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Mom
Mom
We are exact opposites in almost every way.
She is a youngest child, I'm an only. She easily asks for help, I have a hard time asking for help with anything. She is a naturally great writer, I have to work at it. Until I corrupted her, she read non fiction and classics. I read trash.
Mom has stayed young. Whereas my dad listens to big band music and watches old movies, mom has stayed current. She knows who Madonna is, likes Incubus, and would dress like a teenager if her boobage didn't get in the way.
Mom and Dad.
If I didn't look so much like my dad, I would suspect that I was switched at birth.
Growing up, it was just me and my mom. I get twitchy just thinking about raising a child by myself. She was a teacher and a great one. Mom taught Jr. High - grades 7 - 9. Not the easiest grades to teach, what with the kids going through the Hormone Years. She loved and appreciated the kids. Most of the teachers didn't.
Mom lost a bet about grammar with her class and had to eat a piece of paper.
When I was in third grade, my teacher was in the process of a big honking nervous breakdown. She'd throw desks if they were messy and made kids stand in the corner for hours. I started getting hives. Mom went to the principal to get me switched to another class, and he refused, because then he'd have to do it for everybody. Dork.
Mom yanked me out of school. I stayed home with our neighbor, Mrs. Michael, for two weeks until the principal at the school where my mom taught intervened and got me transferred to another school.
Mom is creative, and fights for what she believes in. When 25 school buses parked outside her classroom window every day running their engines and filling the class with icky fumes, she fought to have them park further away at the bottom of the hill. They did.
When the school was burning tons of styrofoam in the incinerator, again making stinky, toxic fumes, she had her students write letters to the city government. The unaffordable dumpster was suddenly affordable and was named after my mother.
Her creative writing class had a Poetry Booth at a local mall and made the front page of the paper. She had the kids paint the classroom with scenes from The Little Prince - it was beautiful, and she had the desks arranged in a circle. The teacher who inherited her classroom immediately repainted the walls institutional white and put the desks back in rows.
Our relationship isn't always easy. Somehow when I was still a kid our roles reversed. I feel more like her mom. She is childlike in many ways, and I don't feel like I ever got to be a child. Sometimes I just want to crawl into her arms and have her tell me everything will be okay, but I'm the one she comes to for comfort and support rather than the other way around.
Me and mom in France. I'm the blonde one:)
I'm not sure how to end this entry. Is saying To Be Continued cheating?
2:29 p.m. - August 04, 2002
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