Friday, July 28, 2017

Your MOM!

In our youth my eight aunts never let a opportunity pass to present us with words of wisdom.  Aunt Fritzy and Aunt Helen were persistent in their advice about how we presented ourselves publicly. As an aside, there were no warnings to the male cousins, just the girls.  Some of my favorites were “ never forget your background and breeding,” and another was, “it doesn’t matter how inexpensive your jewelry was because it all depends on who is wearing it”.  The other  item of particular interest presently is that in my family the pet names for body parts were incredibly colorful, but not until the past two days did I realize how colorful they were.  The pet for the vagina was “mooch.”

Moving on, if you are the kind of person who, when you used bad words, your mother would threaten to wash your mouth out with soap, or if you aspire to be a human rights advocate, do not turn on tv, go on your computer or read the news today. The Mooch’s profanities were off the charts, and Trump decided to forbid TransGender individuals to serve in the military.  We knew all the time that the senior administration was peopled with racists and bigots,  but when I hear some of their rhetoric,  like this statement is followed by “he’s playing to his base,”  I am seriously  discouraged by the fact that his base is 35% of the voting public — this means 35% of this country (you may remember it as “land of the free and home of the brave,  are also bigots and racists.)  That,  as some say, “stops me in my tracks.”  Some of them are even my friends. Geez. Let’s change the subject this is too depressing.

Yesterday a few of my college girlfriends came to spend the afternoon, evening, and morning in N.Y.C.   We have known one another for more than 50 years.  We do not talk everyday or even every month, but we have kept our connection since we were seventeen. People change and so who knows what our lives have been like, but one common element is that we have all lost our mothers.  Some of us more recently than the others, but that kind of loss doesn’t go away.  Mothers and daughters, is a never-ever and uncomplicated relationship.  Some of us have daughters and my guess is that those relationships are not uncomplicated either. As you can imagine, there were many questions asked and answered.

One thing we talked about were 3 options when you are dealing with adult children and probably more. You could offer to  help them cut down the tree.  Or you could offer advice, this time you make suggestions about how to use a saw, but only if they want you too. The third option is to say, “you had a hard week, I’ll cut it down myself.”   My tendency is to rush in and  do it myself rather than wait for my child to do it. I operate much faster than most people.  And it appears when I want something done, I’m usually the only one who cares about it.  Like cleaning off the counters in the kitchen.  Or cleaning out the fridge, making the beds, and keeping the dog  food bowl, and water dish filled.  If your children  are sloppy as children, they most likely will be slobs when they grow up. But at some point that is no longer your business. If you do everything for them they will never be able to do anything for themselves.  As parents we want more for our kids than we had. We convince ourselves we are always doing the right thing. For example,  when we told them they were ‘fantastic,’ we never let them lose, and we fought many of their youthful battles.  Ha, Then we wonder how  we produced a generation of entitled kids. And God only knows what their kids will be like. 

Back to my college pals, all have kids and one confessed that her mother never let her do anything. So when she had children she never told her kids what to do. When we all lived in the dorm we spoke to our parents maybe once a week and only if we could  hot wire the pay phone in the hall. They didn’t expect anything more than that one call.  We didn’t  expect much from our parents, except maybe a check. What do our kids expect from us?  See how you do answering some questions.  What was the favorite thing that your mother did?  Did you like as well as love your mother?  How did other people feel about our mom?  What do you see of your mom in yourself. My mother always sparkled, which was often an embarrassment. Her style was flamboyant.  She was pretty funny sometimes but her sense of humor was questionable. However, she was busy so  she let me do anything I wanted to do — short of something dangerous. Which was never out of the question. 

What do you think Trump children think about the chaos and profanity. Maybe they don’t care or they are numb to it. Maybe they should wash their father’s mind out with soap. Or maybe they are so entitled that they are just having fun being in charge of the government without knowing anything. Oye, If they didn’t care about pussy, we can be sure they don’t care about the Mooch.  We’re just sayin’…. Iris

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