Mama D

This was the name my friends in high school gave to my mom. It was funny and catchy and I think she enjoyed being a mom that my friends actually enjoyed being around. She still keeps in touch with some of them. I had a cool mom. I still do. There are few women that I could even begin to compare to this person that has put up and dealt with so much over the years. Not to say that she had difficult children or a rough marriage. I like to think that she'd tell you that she had it pretty great. She and my dad raised 3 kids in a loving home. She often worked part time, but she was always home to greet us after school. She cooked dinner most nights (despite our jests of her poor cooking skills. Which now, I don't know why we ever gave her a hard time. She's an amazing cook. .... Sorry, mom)
She did it all. But the thing she did best, aside from attending sporting events, and driving us to social outings and helping us with school work, was loving us. "Of course she loved you, she's your  mom, that's her job." It is, I agree. But she loved us and still does, mind you, in a way that is incomparable. My mom loved us so much that I can look back on the 18 years I lived at home with fondness. Even when I was in trouble, or crying over how strict I thought she was being, I still felt loved. And my memories that involve pain or frustration are covered in this warmness that I recognize as love. I have an amazing mother.
There was a time that I didn't appreciate her. I'm sure many teenage girls go through periods where mom's opinion isn't all that important. We have those months or years maybe where our friends, our boyfriends, our societies opinions are more valuable than hers. Fortunately for me and my mom, I came around and realized the stupidity of my ways. Unfortunately for me, payback is a bitch and I foresee 2-3 years of B living with her grandparents so I can avoid her hormone driven wrath.
Mind you, I wasn't a difficult kid. I had friends that made good decisions, as did my brothers, I dated only mildly, and stayed out of trouble. But I remember making her cry. I remember fighting with her over dumb stuff. Stuff that no one should fight over but that I'm sure many teenagers and moms do. I was selfish, and rude and disrespectful. We grow up and suddenly have this knowledge about life, that if only we had had it in our teens, our lives would have been so much easier. But we didn't, and no one does. We have to learn those hard lessons the hard way. We have to walk before running and we have to fall down a few times before figuring it all out.
The worst feeling as a kid was not making my mom cry, it wasn't listening to her lecture me, or yelling at me. It was hearing her say "I am disappointed in you". Those 5 words crushed me. And after all these years, I've figured out why.
Some kids have crappy parents. Parents that don't hug them, parents that don't read to them as young children, parents that could not care less how they did in school or who their friends were or what things interested them. Yes, some parents shouldn't be parents. But my parents, my parents were/are amazing. I never doubted that they loved me because they reminded me over and over again. They never had to ask how school was or who my friends were or what my hobbies were, because they were involved in my life. My parents invested themselves in every possible meaning of the word. Yes, we were some of the most loved and best cared for kids I knew. I never feared that I could loose that love. Not once. It never entered my mind. But their respect, their approval, that is what I valued in them. When you're young you search for tons of approval from friends, teachers, peers, etc. But my parents approval, more specifically my mom's, that mattered more than anything else. As an adult, it still does. I value her opinion and her blessing higher than most. She's gone from being my mother, a maternal figure that taught me and raised me, to this vessel of wisdom, of comfort, of agape.
I struggle daily with being the type of mother I want to be to my own children. But in the end I know I must be doing something right because I hear my own mother talk to people about her pride in me as a daughter, a woman, and a mom. And that folks, is the highest compliment of all.