MY HERO

I awoke this morning needing exactly this post written by daughter years ago. As I read the words she wrote about me, I wept knowing how lately I have failed miserably to live up to her words by sinking into some self-imposed abyss. Honestly, I don't know if I have the courage or the strength to pull myself from the crevise in which I've fallen. I may need Lassie to come bring me a rope to help hoist me out of here...

"Wimpy Daughter" aka Christina was given an assignment to write a paper about her hero for one of her college classes 7 years ago (2004). The following is the paper she wrote:

By definition a hero is somebody who is admired and looked up to for outstanding qualities or achievements, somebody who commits acts of remarkable bravery or who has shown great courage, strength of character or another admirable quality. I find all these traits in my hero. "Try to picture a person who stands apart from the crowd who sees things not in black or white, but in varying shades of gray. Try to picture a person who closes their eyes and hears the beat of a different drummer, then marches proudly and eagerly away to do their own thing regardless of the consequences or popular opinion. Try to picture a person who is not a polished gem, but a diamond in the rough...someone who believes true beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and that the best things in life are free." (an excerpt from blogsite, Abnormally Normal People written by Red Kitten aka Mildred Ratched) When I picture this person, I see my mother and she is my hero.

Ever since I was little, I always knew my mother was different. It was not until I grew up that I later could appreciate the “difference” in her versus the stereotypical normal mother everyone else seemed to have. My mother raised us to be leaders not followers, to chart our own destiny and to be no one’s fool. This was daunting to a young child whose only desire was to fit in and have what everyone else had, a normal mom. My mother always taught my two brothers and me that the mind was a wonderful thing and we should use it. As far back as I can remember, probably to when I was three, I was told, “you are a smart person, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Now I realize that all mothers will tell their children that, but most would not have done what she did. She let us use those brains instead of thinking for us. She told us that God gave us a brain and to use it, if we made a mistake or got into trouble we were to use our brain and figure out a solution. We had to, she was not going to suffer our foolishness and molly coddle any of us. Does this make her different? At the time I certainly thought so. When all my friends bragged about their parents giving them the answers to homework problems, kids picking on us at school or about how so and so parents was screaming at someone about their child’s actions my mother sat back and said to us, “You figure it out.” How I hated that, I wanted normal so bad and I didn’t have it, but it taught us to use those brains and boy did we figure it out.

Normalcy was not ever in abundance with my mother. Living in an area where racial slurs were the norm, my mother taught us to respect everyone equally as a human being regardless of skin color. She taught us to look beneath the surface of a person’s outer skin and find the true essence of who that person really was. I never knew what racial discrimination was until I became an adult and heard it. It was shocking to realize that the person making those remarks was so narrow minded. I guess witnessing such narrow mindedness opened my eyes to the fact that once again my mother defied what was normal and instead of seeing things in the standard black and white, she saw those gray areas. I never realized as I was growing up that she taught us from those gray matters more than from the black and white. As a young child I was allowed to watch what I wanted to on television. Most parents shudder to think what a child would choose, not my mother; she just sat back and allowed us to make those choices on our own. Instead of choosing stupidly we chose wisely and by doing so were taught a valuable lesson, the reward system. If you show that I can trust you, I will extend your freedom, but if you mess up you lose that freedom. I can honestly say our freedom wasn’t yanked away very often.

My mother will never be a polished gem; she will always be a diamond in the rough. Like an uncut diamond she has many flaws that I once saw as imperfections and now badges of courage, lack of selfishness and a kindness that is so overwhelmingly generous. I was taught it is better to give than to receive and always thought, "you’ve got to be kidding, right? You can’t really believe that bull!" But time and time again, we learned through her actions she meant just that. Her kindness and generosity to family as well as strangers will linger forever in my mind. What I saw as a weakness in character, thinking she was being taken advantage of, was an error on my part. You can only be taken advantage of if you let someone do so and she never allowed that. She showed strength in choosing to help those in need instead of doing the easier thing and ignoring them. She did without when others needed because she felt they needed more than she did. She didn’t just talk to us about these things, we saw her doing them time and time again. My mother taught us about the beauty found in the art of giving, the courage to love when you wanted to hate, to be strong when you wanted to be weak and to have the strength to go on when you feel that you are failing.

Christina (Wimpy Daughter) and Karen (Mildred Ratched)

My mother has not lived an easy life. The choices she has made are choices she has to bear, but bear them she does. Sometimes in frustration, in wishing she had done different, sometimes with laughter as she recalls a happy moment, but however she does it, she always bears them with honesty. She explains, not lectures, about her mistakes she has made along the way, in hopes that we will not have to go through the same things. I don’t look at them as mistakes though, because without the things she has witnessed and gone through herself, she would not be the person she is today and that person is my hero.

 Repost and edited from 12/01/2011

The Wetter The Better

There's a few rules in life and one of them is to never make me the bartender...NEVER!  I don't follow recipes very well. I'm a do my own thing type of person after I get the basics down. 

You see we had a rather small family gathering for my daughter's birthday and it involved strawberry daiquiris and social distancing and cupcakes that my son-in-law couldn't believe I made because they looked like they had been professionally made. Oh yeah, I'm that good when I want to be! The birthday party was great, but my "normal" evening consists of sitting in my backyard, listening to music and shooting the shit with Martha while we social distance across the chain link fence lit by tiki torches. 

After the birthday party, I made a "special" blender full of daiquiris just for Martha and me and I don't drink or I should say I may drink something maybe once a year so this was designated as "my once a year."  After four strong drinks and some tsunami strength Surfing in a Hurricane weed for medicinal purposes only (I see you rolling your eyes as you read this) I was one with the world and ready to boogaloo down Broadway in my flamingo mask, but Pensacola doesn't have a Broadway unfortunately or maybe it was a fortunate thing for the inhabitants of Northwest Florida. I've never gotten the feeling that the South has ever been quite ready for this Yankee all the years I've lived here. I've always felt like a fish out of water or a flamingo amongst a flock of geese.

Martha almost got the hose after me last night because I threatened to jump...no, not off a bridge or a building. I jumped up and down one night not long ago when I was pretty baked and I felt like dancing and it was the WRONG thing to do. Someone with as many disc/spinal problems as I have shouldn't jump...EVER! I found that out after the second or third jump. I was in so much pain I whimpered that I needed to sit down NOW and that jumping was the wrong thing to do. Enlightenment always comes quickly with pain! Martha's husband told her to get the hose if I ever tried to jump again, so she run and got the hose last night. She was ready to blast me with it. I kept telling her I was going to do it, but I was just yanking her chain. Imagine that! Me yanking someone's chain? You see, if I were her I would have soaked me just on general principles and laughed at me while I screamed and hollered as the cold water baptized me. The wetter the better I say and Martha could have put this fish back in the water where I belong!

MIXED FEELINGS

Check out the mullet!

Last night my daughter, Christina sent me a text message telling me that my ex-husband, Jim wasn't doing well and probably wouldn't live much longer. Her ex step-brother, Josh had texted her to let her know the news and asked her to pass along the information to me with a copy of a short note I had written him years earlier back in the early 1990's. I wasn't too surprised about the news about Jim because he has never taken care of his health even when he was younger.  Of course, I have mixed feelings about the news and will deal with those feelings over time. Ho! Ho! Ho! 'Tis the season...

I have to admit that I was more surprised that Josh had kept that note than I was about the news about his father. When I read the note, I did so with a "red pen" in hand looking for errors. Of course, I found a few. Go figure!  What stuck out most to me was the part I wrote about God. You see, I am NOT a believer, but Josh is so I must have written that part for his benefit. Mildred has a heart after all! Shhhh! Let that be our little secret because I have a reputation to uphold. What brought a smile to my face were the personal touches that only he and I would know what they meant.  I have to admit the note brought a tear or two to my rather dry eyes.

I vaguely remember writing the note, but the circumstances aren't crystal clear. Old age is a bitch! Obviously, it must have been one of the times when Jim and I parted ways. Josh had finished high school and had started college.  I do feel proud of him because he went on to finish college and he became a doctor. His brother, Jason is also a doctor and his sister, Jamie works in the medical field as well.  I never had a close relationship with Jason and Jamie because they lived in another state with their mother and we only saw them periodically. Josh lived with us. And for the record...Josh was a handful and then some! I always thought he just needed someone to believe in him no matter what and I always tried to be that person.

When he finished college, he came and found me to let me know he had graduated and had been accepted into medical school and would be starting soon. The rest is history...

It's been a long time since I've heard from him and I know the circumstances suck, but I'm glad to know I still am in his thoughts occasionally.

The Definition of Confusion (Thank You, Mother)

Reposted from 3/15/2010 edited:

When my children were still quite young and in school, they used to visit their grandparents on school holidays. I would drive halfway to Pensacola to meet my mother and place my children in her care. The first few days always felt like utter bliss and then the house gradually became a mausoleum. By the time I would pick up my children, I was more than ready to have them come home again. I welcomed that deafening chaos and unruly banter that came with three children.

My mother was always rather rigid while I was growing up and had a very democratic way of handling punishment. If the guilty party didn't confess the first time when my brothers and I were asked who did something, we all suffered the consequences. As I grew older and eventually became a parent myself, the woman who raised me seemed to change. She got soft in her old age! Had I broken her spirit? Possibly! But each time my children would rave on about the fun-loving person who they perceived their grandmother to be, I knew it wasn't the same person who raised me. My mother was proof that aliens do exist! They has abducted my mother and left in her place a female Captain Kangaroo or would it date me too much if I said Shari Lewis and Lambchop? Ask anyone from my old neighborhood! They knew my mother was a force to be reckoned with. Her voice alone could raise the dead. 

Each time my children would go for a visit, it took weeks before I could straighten them out. My mother waited on them hand and foot and made them do NOTHING but fun things while they visited her. When they came home sassy and quite lazy, I would want to pull my hair out. One time while driving home, my children seemed quite mesmerized by a joke book one of them had gotten while in Pensacola. One of their visiting rituals was for her to take them (her angelic grandchildren) to Hawsey's, a used bookstore and let them each purchase a large paper bag full of books to read. All three of my children loved to read so going to Hawsey's was always a fun thing to do.

Since they were quiet on our trip home and this was an oddity for them, I tried to engage them in conversation only to be told they were busy reading jokes. That explained the occasional chuckle I heard from the backseat. I asked them to read me aloud some of the jokes. My youngest child, Matthew spoke up and said he would read one. Although he was only 7 at the time, his reading skills were quite advanced for someone his age. As Matthew read, I almost drove off the road.

Whats' the definition of "confusion"?

Twenty blind lesbians in a fish market!

WTF? Now, with glee they started reading more jokes from the book as fast as they could until I could gather my thoughts and ask them where they got the book. In unison they told me...HAWSEY'S! And of course I asked if  their grandmother let them buy that book? Well, I was told she never screened the books that they bought, so the book titled Truly Tasteless Jokes was easily purchased by my son, Daniel (age 9).

Then they all went on to start reciting the dirty little ditties my mother had taught them. It was then I knew she had truly lost her mind or maybe the rules that apply to being a parent were different from those that apply to being a grandparent. It definitely was a gotcha moment lovingly given to me by my mother. To this day, my mother just smiles innocently when this story is told. What I want to know is why she never taught my brothers and me these ditties when we were kids or why my grandmother never taught them to us? Geez! I feel cheated! 

An example of one of the my mother's ditties:

A flock of birds

Chocked full of turds

Flew over my father's castle

They stretched their necks

And shit a peck

Then closed up their assholes.

Gratitude statement: I'm thankful I don't live in a castle near a fish market.

THE ROAD TO NOWHERE - PART X

Are you still with me? If you are, then you've reached the moment of the big reveal. From 1975 when my daughter was born until about 2 years ago (2016) my daughter always believed  her father was Kenny Rowe. I never for one moment thought he was an actual possibility. All one had to do was do some simple math. That's why we have fingers and toes! For my daughter to be his, she would have had to have been born prematurely at about 7 months. Have you ever heard of a 7 month old fetus weighing over 9 lbs? 

I'm to blame for this lie and do take full responsibility for telling it and for letting others tell it. You see, way back when I was still in Chipley before I came back to Pensacola to give birth and I told Kenny I was pregnant.  But before I could tell him it wasn't his, he beat me to the punch by assuming that he was the father.  Instead of setting the record straight right then and there, I got my ass bent out of shape when he jumped in before I could tell him and he beat me to the punch by expecting me to get an abortion. I guess his initial reaction about my situation pissed me off and I just let the whole thing ride and let him continue to believe a lie. For the longest time, I thought my secret would never come back to bite me. I thought my secret was safe and that I was protecting my daughter when in reality all I was doing was taking the easy way out by protecting myself from dealing with the truth.

Like most lies, they may not catch up to you at first and sometimes they never catch up to you, but anyone with a conscience eventually feels guilty for telling a lie especially when it's a huge lie. At that point, any honorable person will decide to finally do the right thing if they can. Sure, I felt pangs of guilt over the years, but I wasn't ready to do the right thing until a few years ago. About the time I decided to come clean, I also decided to do some genealogy research so my daughter could at least have a more complete picture of the gene pool that created her. Before that all she knew were all the kooks on my side of her tree.  Doing genealogy research has been an on again off again project of mine for about 20+ years and include being related to many of the Salem witches, Laura Ingalls Wilder, several passengers on the Mayflower, William the Conqueror and thousands of weirdos and misfits that have given me a certain flair.

Telling my daughter the truth was difficult, but I did it without making any excuses for my deceitful behavior. I did what I did many years ago and it was wrong. Period! I was then faced with an entire new set of decisions to make. I figured tracking Donnie down would be relatively easy, but that wasn't the case. Doesn't Murphy's Laws state "nothing is ever as easy as you think it will be?" For the last two years I've chased a "ghost." At some point, I thought "maybe he's dead," but if that was true, there would have been a record of his death and I couldn't find one. 

When I started my "project, I had my daughter do a DNA test through Ancestry.com to give me a place to start my search. Until very late on August 10, 2018, I wasn't able to connect all the dots that would lead me to finding Donnie. Up until then I found plenty of people who showed up as DNA matches for my daughter, but the closest match I had to work with was a couple first and second cousins. Those people never responded to my request for help filling in the blank spots on my daughter's tree. Go figure! I guess on August 10th all the stars and planets were in perfect alignment because I finally located him. The Donnie Arnold I knew long ago is Martin Eudon Arnold. A couple details I discovered made me laugh out loud. The first was that he lives in a place I lived about 30 years ago. It really is a small world when you get right down to it! The next thing that amused me was that I found out when I located him that his birthday was on August 11th...the very next day. Happy birthday, Donnie!

As I dug deeper, my amusement turned into a really sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I discovered out he had gotten married in 1973.  OMG! Was he married when we had our little brouhaha in Panama City Beach?  The answer to that was no. He had gotten divorced the month before I met him in August 1974. I guess I was both his birthday gift and celebratory freedom lay that summer.  He did however manage to get his ex-wife pregnant after they divorced and she had a baby boy a month after my daughter was born. He also got married in 1988, but his wife died in 1991. Since that time, he appears to have remained single or at least never married again.

Now, I'm faced with what should I do next. Should I do nothing and just be content with handing my daughter all the info I've found or should I rock Donnie's world by contacting him with a "hey dude, remember me and guess what we did?"  I think my daughter deserves an opportunity to know her father if he's open to that, but I definitely don't want to hurt her by throwing her to the wolves. I have a letter written and saved on my computer, but I don't know who I should send it to. Should I send it to his two adult children and let them be the bearer of good tidings and joy or should I bite the bullet and send him the letter? I'm not usually this indecisive, but then again I've never been in this situation before.  Any advice anyone wants to toss my way will be deeply appreciated. I'm seriously running on empty. I haven't had a normal sleep pattern for a long, long time. I feel anxious whenever I start thinking about this and I just want to put this behind me once and for all, but I can't do that until I do something...and hopefully that something I ultimately decide to do is the right thing for everyone concerned.  I used to keep an 8-ball on my desk at work for situations that required decision making. Maybe I should dust it off and consult it now!

THE ROAD TO NOWHERE - PART VII

The remnants of a broken heart linger for a long time. To cope with all those ugly feelings I felt I made myself believe I didn't want someone tagging along after me like a puppy in search of yummies. Just fuck me hard and go your ass home or wherever, but remember your way back just in case my itch needs to be scratched again. That's how I came off, but it wasn't really how I felt. Like anyone else, I wanted to be loved by a special someone...my special someone, but I was quite clueless when it came to making that happen so instead I threw up my wall and acted like an alley cat in heat. That was easier than admitting what I really wanted. I had myself convinced I didn't deserve to have a normal life with someone who loved me. It was definitely a dangerous slippery sloop! Yes, it was easier to be a saucy tart...it was familiar territory and I was good at it. The other option scared the hell out of me and I was clueless. REALLY CLUELESS!

With the holidays fast approaching I set up my monthly doctor appointments to fall so I could spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family. That meant I'd be eating actual food instead of bologna sandwiches. My mother was a fantastic cook and I was really looking forward to all the goodies I knew she'd make. So off to Pensacola I went with an insatiable appetite and a bag full of dirty laundry. 

I was keeping my fingers crossed that my "Christmas" follow-up appointment would be my last since the pain in my abdomen was finally getting better. My mother chauffeured me to the base and patiently waited for me outside the examination room.  The doctor I saw wasn't who I had been seeing, but that was normal for the military way of life.  Patients got stuck with whatever doctor was available at the time. Rotations sucked and I hated it because no one was ever given the luxury of having their doctor get to know them. Patients were merely a number and a name and nothing more. I had been fortunate to have seen the same doctor for my last few appointments, but that had abruptly ended. Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!

Now with my feet up in the stirrups and the white sheet strategically draped across my legs, the doctor readied me for a pelvic exam. I knew the drill, but liked it about as well as any woman liked being poked and prodded without any foreplay or a few kind words. This doctor took a little longer examining me than the last one had. When he was finished, he stood up and casually asked me if I knew that I was 4 months pregnant. What? Did I know what? I told him that I had been being treated for an ovarian cyst. The last doctor told me it was quite normal not to have a period, so I never got too concerned about it. As reality set in, I felt the color drain from my face and I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. What in hell was I going to do with a baby? Babies can't survive on bologna sandwiches and mushroom tea. When I left the room I was totally dazed and confused.  My mother took one look at me and said, "You're pregnant, aren't you?" No lecture followed. No sermon. No interrogation. No bright lights and rubber hoses. Whatever followed would be entirely my decision to make...alone.

So what do you get when you have a lot of unprotected sex? BINGO! The previous idiot doctor had been treating me for an ovarian cyst. Did he get his medical degree from the University of Hard Knocks? Guess what, Einstein? My cyst grew arms, legs and a head and was eventually named Christina and nothing quite slows your roll like facing an unplanned pregnancy. 

Those days seem like so long ago, yet when I get together with any old friend from those days it all seems like yesterday. All our lives have changed immensely over the years, but I think the more things change the more they ultimately remain the same. So in remembrance of those good old days and the people who imprinted themselves upon my life, I inhale slowly…deeply until my smile glows from within and the memories warm my chilly heart.

SKY HIGH!

Daniel, the older of my two sons loved his little red wagon and found so many creative uses for it. One of its riskier uses was discovered by my friend Carol when she came to visit me one day. She had gone out into the backyard to see the boys while my daughter, Christina was at school, but only found Matthew quietly playing with his trucks on the ground. Daniel's empty red wagon was next to the back fence under some trees. As she walked out into the back yard to look for Daniel, she heard him yelling, "Sky high!" What she discovered took her breath away. Daniel had positioned his red wagon under the lowest tree limb in the back yard and used that limb to hoist himself up into the tree where he had climbed to the very top. Carol wasn't really worried about him actually jumping out of the tree like he kept threatening to do. What worried her more than his threats was that he might lose his footing and fall out of the tree accidentally. After trying to coax him down from the tree and realizing she was getting nowhere, she came inside to get me so I could handle it. 

After getting him safely down and scolding him for climbing the tree, I got the saw from the shed and sawed off the limb flush with the trunk of the tree. I knew how little boys are and how they rarely followed directions the first time, so instead of having a repeat performance I decided it would save me some of my sanity by just cutting the limb from the tree. I know my boys always hated having a mother who could out think them and stay a few steps ahead of the game. Maybe being the youngest and only girl growing up gave me the head's up on what little boys were all about.

Not long after the SKY HIGH! incident, we moved into a larger house. One day while all the kids were outside playing in the backyard I was sitting inside enjoying a few minutes of solitude. All of a sudden I heard "thump, thump, thump" across the roof. It sounded like a giant squirrel had just run across the roof chasing a buffalo. As I looked up trying to figure out what the noise was, it happened again...thump, thump, thump. That time I got up and went outside to see where the noise was coming from and what was causing it. What I discovered on the roof wasn't a giant squirrel after all. It was a four year old who was in BIG trouble! Daniel had used the tree growing next to the house as a ladder to get up on the roof. In no uncertain terms, I told him to come down NOW! He knew he was in trouble and gave me his best "Oh Mom, I'm sorry" look. That look may have saved him from getting a spanking, but he did get punished and sent to his room so he could think about it. Over the next few weeks he pulled that same stunt a few more times which ended each time by getting a stern lecture about the dangers of falling and hurting himself.

The fourth time I caught him doing it, I was pissed! I snapped off a switch from the bush next to the back door as I steamed outside to get him down from that damn tree. When he saw me he knew he had pushed me too far that time and that his "Oh Mom, I'm sorry" look wasn't going to work. With a couple well placed whacks with the switch, I'm proud to say Daniel finally learned his lesson and never climbed that tree or any tree again. The only problem was that his replacement for tree climbing was even worse. For some reason, he decided to take up chasing snakes! I give up! Raising 2 boys is like raising 50 children! And now I have a legitimate reason for being crazy! Did I say I stayed a few steps ahead of them? Well, folks I lied!

THE PTA AND THE INCREDIBLE HULK

When my children were in elementary school they attended school in Port St. Joe, a small village along the Redneck Riviera.  I have mixed feelings about my years there largely due to the way in which a single mother was too often viewed and treated.  If I hadn't been a strong woman I believe on many occasions I would have either been destroyed or defined by a particular event, yet I somehow always let those times strengthen me and broaden my horizons.  My children seemed to follow suit and learned at a young age how to use their heads.  I have to admit they always seemed to amaze me every step of the way and never disappointed me in how they always managed to shine even when shining wasn't what they should have done.

My youngest child, Matthew was a quite precocious.  He was always up for a good challenge so when he announced to me one day that he wanted to be in a PTA sponsored talent contest, it didn't surprise me.  My only question was what he was going to do for talent.  You see, although I have always thought my children were the brightest amongst all the stars, the Jackson 5 they were not.  Matthew simply told me he was going to be a comedian and that was the last I heard about it for several weeks.

Then one day Christina, his only sister and the oldest of my three children came rushing into the house as soon as she got off the school bus.  There in the doorway she stopped with her hands firmly planted on her hips.  She looked at me and said, "You aren't going to believe what your son did today!"  Uh oh!  There wasn't any "my brother" or "Matthew" about it...at that moment he was my son and only my son so I knew he had done something pretty outstanding and probably something memorable.  She started telling me about the semi-finals for the talent contest that had been held earlier that afternoon in the school auditorium.  A panel of four teachers were appointed to select the best of the best who would compete in front of the families later that night.  All the fifth graders thought it was great because they were excused from class so they could watch the selection process.

When it came Matthew's turn, he sheepishly meandered up on stage.  Christina's friends all pointed out, "Hey, there's your little brother!"  Matthew took center stage and began his stand up comedy routine with the following joke:  What has a hundred teeth and guards the incredible hulk?  His punch line was "my zipper".  Immediately, the auditorium filled with laughter!  Now, it wasn't that he had told an inappropriate joke that embarrassed his sister.  It was the fact that all four of the teachers laughed at his joke.  With her hands still firmly planted on her hips she said with utter disgust, "And they laughed!"  Needless to say Matthew was not selected to perform in front of the families although I have to admit the night would have been more memorable if he had performed.

About that time Matthew came in the house.  Please tell me how does a mother explain to a 5 year old white version of Eddie Murphy what's appropriate and what's inappropriate?  How does one rip away the joy he must have felt from accomplishing what all comedians live to do?  After all he had accomplished his goal.  He got the audience to laugh!  All I asked him as he came in the house was if he had anything he wanted to tell me.  He stopped momentarily and thought for a second before getting a quizzical look on his face and simply told me,"No."  I left it at that and figured I'd address his choice and source of jokes another time. 

MY HERO

"Wimpy Daughter" aka Christina was given an assignment to write a paper about her hero for one of her college classes 7 years ago. The following is the paper she wrote:

By definition a hero is somebody who is admired and looked up to for outstanding qualities or achievements, somebody who commits acts of remarkable bravery or who has shown great courage, strength of character or another admirable quality. I find all these traits in my hero. "Try to picture a person who stands apart from the crowd who sees things not in black or white, but in varying shades of gray. Try to picture a person who closes their eyes and hears the beat of a different drummer, then marches proudly and eagerly away to do their own thing regardless of the consequences or popular opinion. Try to picture a person who is not a polished gem, but a diamond in the rough...someone who believes true beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and that the best things in life are free." (an excerpt from blogsite, Abnormally Normal People written by Red Kitten aka Mildred Ratched) When I picture this person, I see my mother and she is my hero.

Ever since I was little, I always knew my mother was different. It was not until I grew up that I later could appreciate the “difference” in her versus the stereotypical normal mother everyone else seemed to have. My mother raised us to be leaders not followers, to chart our own destiny and to be no one’s fool. This was daunting to a young child whose only desire was to fit in and have what everyone else had, a normal mom. My mother always taught my two brothers and me that the mind was a wonderful thing and we should use it. As far back as I can remember, probably to when I was three, I was told, “you are a smart person, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Now I realize that all mothers will tell their children that, but most would not have done what she did. She let us use those brains instead of thinking for us. She told us that God gave us a brain and to use it, if we made a mistake or got into trouble we were to use our brain and figure out a solution. We had to, she was not going to suffer our foolishness and molly coddle any of us. Does this make her different? At the time I certainly thought so. When all my friends bragged about their parents giving them the answers to homework problems, kids picking on us at school or about how so and so parents was screaming at someone about their child’s actions my mother sat back and said to us, “You figure it out.” How I hated that, I wanted normal so bad and I didn’t have it, but it taught us to use those brains and boy did we figure it out.

Normalcy was not ever in abundance with my mother. Living in an area where racial slurs were the norm, my mother taught us to respect everyone equally as a human being regardless of skin color. She taught us to look beneath the surface of a person’s outer skin and find the true essence of who that person really was. I never knew what racial discrimination was until I became an adult and heard it. It was shocking to realize that the person making those remarks was so narrow minded. I guess witnessing such narrow mindedness opened my eyes to the fact that once again my mother defied what was normal and instead of seeing things in the standard black and white, she saw those gray areas. I never realized as I was growing up that she taught us from those gray matters more than from the black and white. As a young child I was allowed to watch what I wanted to on television. Most parents shudder to think what a child would choose, not my mother; she just sat back and allowed us to make those choices on our own. Instead of choosing stupidly we chose wisely and by doing so were taught a valuable lesson, the reward system. If you show that I can trust you, I will extend your freedom, but if you mess up you lose that freedom. I can honestly say our freedom wasn’t yanked away very often.

My mother will never be a polished gem; she will always be a diamond in the rough. Like an uncut diamond she has many flaws that I once saw as imperfections and now badges of courage, lack of selfishness and a kindness that is so overwhelmingly generous. I was taught it is better to give than to receive and always thought, "you’ve got to be kidding, right? You can’t really believe that bull!" But time and time again, we learned through her actions she meant just that. Her kindness and generosity to family as well as strangers will linger forever in my mind. What I saw as a weakness in character, thinking she was being taken advantage of, was an error on my part. You can only be taken advantage of if you let someone do so and she never allowed that. She showed strength in choosing to help those in need instead of doing the easier thing and ignoring them. She did without when others needed because she felt they needed more than she did. She didn’t just talk to us about these things, we saw her doing them time and time again. My mother taught us about the beauty found in the art of giving, the courage to love when you wanted to hate, to be strong when you wanted to be weak and to have the strength to go on when you feel that you are failing.

Christina (Wimpy Daughter) and Karen (Mildred Ratched) 1996

My mother has not lived an easy life. The choices she has made are choices she has to bear, but bear them she does. Sometimes in frustration, in wishing she had done different, sometimes with laughter as she recalls a happy moment, but however she does it, she always bears them with honesty. She explains, not lectures, about her mistakes she has made along the way, in hopes that we will not have to go through the same things. I don’t look at them as mistakes though, because without the things she has witnessed and gone through herself, she would not be the person she is today and that person is my hero.

I GAVE BIRTH TO A PRINCESS

This is my beautiful daughter, Princess Christina. She would like to have people believe I hung a porkchop around her neck as a child so at least the dogs would play with her. What a sassy little vixen she is and also she's bursting at the seams from being full of crap! She's talented in so many ways and I truly wish she would see her full potential instead of spinning her wheels like yours truly (I guess this comes from being raised by a mother who had potential, but did everything she could to destroy it).

Gratitude statement: I'm thankful for rubber porkchops because they are reusable!