Mothers, though universally loved and appreciated as a concept, occupation, and virtue, I find are underestimated on a day-to-day basis. They nag, some have major mood swings, they slap your hand when you pick up candy and replace it with broccoli (I'm 23 and she still does this...), they're just not pleasant people most of the time. They're also almost always right, which can get pretty annoying. It wasn't until college, with distance, that I started to come around and truly appreciated the damned person who put me in this world without my permission. She and my father were like, "Here's life, Liz. Have a blast, enjoy." I was like, "Ok this kind of sucks but fine I'll do it."
My mother is human too, I get it, she fucks up. She's made her fair share of mistakes raising me. As a gifted storyteller and as a former teacher, she took it upon herself to open up my eyes, ears, and heart, but stretched them too wide and too fast in the process. I now have to live with the stretch marks. She nurtured me with fairy tales and folklore but also damaged me with tragedies and drama. She was too honest with me too early about how the world works. Most mothers would turn their daughters away from unpleasant things -- be it a homeless man on the street, the crippled family-friend, a dead baby bird below the window pane -- while my mother turned me onto them. She made me ask questions that she didn't have the answers to. She told sad stories about her own life that made me feel pain before I even learned how to cry properly, which in turn made me feel guilty before I even grasped the concept of apology and forgiveness. I found it unfair at that tender age. However, she told me because it was her strange way of protecting me from them. Awareness is knowledge, there's no bliss in choosing to be blind. She believes that if you have eyes, you use them to the best of your ability. Instead of providing me with rose colored glasses, she gave me a magnifying glass. I despised her for them when I was younger because I didn't understand, and didn't want to understand. But in the long run, I've benefitted.
One of the greatest lessons she has ever taught me, is this small, big thing we know as gratefulness. She said, rather simply, "Be grateful. The first thing I want you to do when you get up in the morning, before you think of yourself, breakfast, or me for that matter, is to say thank you. Then, before you go to sleep, do the same thing. Say thank you. Even if you don't mean it, even if your life is horrible and you hate everything and everyone in it, get in the habit of saying thanks on a daily basis. There's something about acknowledging it, even just the word, that changes you as a person. You might not realize that morning or that night, but it'll change you. Trust me. Even if you don't, say thanks. Every single day."
Word to my mother. I put up a miserable front most of the time (mostly for fun) but I am incredibly blessed. I know everyone says that but that's because a lot of people are. To have been born, to have made it this far, to be alive, to have organs, and legs, and arms, and fingernails, to have joints that bend, to have hair and the option of shaving it off if I want to, to have guts enough to feel and love and fight. I have free will and choices and consequences. No matter how hard I try to push away sentiment when handed them, I am always surrounded by those who actually love and care for me, and are brutally real with me, likewise, those whom I love, care, and am real for in return. It didn't occur to me until recently just how rare this is. So thank you, mother, father, family, friends, lovers, food, noise, bed, music, firefighters, and fruity cocktails. Thank you. Sometimes you all suck, but today, I'm obliged to love and thank you all.
Happy Thanksgiving. Get fat as fuck.
