“You look just like your mother,” someone told me last night at a party.
“You sound just like your mother,” someone told me on when I answered the phone.
“You are wearing purple, just like your mother,” people tell me whenever I wear her color.
OMG! Am I turning into my mother?
How many times have you asked yourself that question? More importantly, how do you feel about it? I have some friends who may smile at this question and others who may grimace. I used to grimace and now I smile.
I am spending Mother’s Day weekend visiting my mother and realize how lucky I am to be able to this. Many of my friends no longer have their mothers, or their mothers are frail or ill. Mine is healthy and as energetic as ever. I will never be a mother; the chance to give birth to my own child is long behind me and I made a choice not to start a family of my own. I am an only child, so I have no brothers or sisters to be with me and my mother. My father is gone. So today it is just us gals, me and my mother going to brunch and reconnecting in person since I live hundreds of miles away.
Growing up, I lived in the large purple shadow she cast. I saw my mother as glamourous, successful, authoritative and a tough act to follow. So, I moved away to find my own true colors. She was a big fish in a small bowl; I wanted to be a big fish in a larger bowl. And I found it in New York with a new life, a successful career and a yankee husband.
Yet, still, as far away as I went, DNA goes deep, and I find myself mellowing out and I hear myself make a familiar remark or gesture like her. And I sayto myself, “OMG! I am turning in my mother!”
After years of fiercely seeking my independence, I now return home to Tennessee with a new appreciation for the familiarity of where I was raised. It started when my father’s illness returned; then I was diagnosed. My mother was faced with a dying husband in one city and daughter facing a life threatening disease in another. I cannot imagine what that must have been like for her. But we got through it and moved forward. Two lives changed; two people stronger.
Now the tables have turned. My father is gone, and a mother-daughter visit is quite different without his presence. And sometimes I feel like I am now the voice of authority.
I hear myself telling my mother to eat more vegetables and less sugary foods. “Watch your diet!”
I ride in the car with white knuckles gripping the seat telling her to stop drifting into the other lane. “Watch the road! Put down the smoothie!”
I worry she will trip and fall on her hemline or a curb. “Watch where you are walking!”
We review legal documents and an emergency checklist in case I am overseas and something happens to her. Who will be there? Do I know where everything is filed?
And now that I found my own true colors I realize how much I like purple more than any other color. I am learning what it means to embrace your purple side. Here are just a few things I have learned to apply to my life:
1. Be the color you want to be; don’t hide it or change your personality just to blend in.
2. You may want to change the world, but making helping to make changes in your local community can make a world of difference.
3. Friends are the family you choose for yourself.
4. Rather than trying to have it all, it is better to find balance in your life.
5. Focus on what you can do for others and not what they can do for you.
Growing up my dad would say, “Listen to you mother.” And I would roll my eyes. But now, I realize she has taught me some of the best lessons in life. The ring of purple has come full circle.
Like Mother Like Daughter
