Becoming My Mother

Conversation for July 27, 2011

 

Today my husband and I went out to do some errands. He was going to the hardware store and I was going to Safeway. We detoured via Starbucks for a cuppa, which we purchased took to one of the outdoor tables. I had my new purse which is a Miche bag. Don’t feel behind the times if you have no clue about Miche bags. I only heard of them a few months ago when I happened to be at a convention that had amazing vendors. One of them was vending Miche bags, and I think she was making a fortune. She did off me because I bought an insert bag and two skins.

“Huh?” you are probably asking. Bags with skins? What is she talking about? Well, here is the deal. When you sport a Miche bag you have a fabric insert bag inside and a “skin” on the outside. The two elements of this handbag are held together by magnets at the top which also close it securely with no help from the wearer. The purpose for the cloth insert is that when you want to change your purse you can just pull out the insert and put it into another skin. Miche Company sells a lot of different shells that are very stylish. I love my purse so much that on the strength of that infatuation I sold all my purses at a recent yard sale. They also offer a variety of accessories such as different straps, matching wallets, a purse hanger, blingy Purse Charms and magnets to attach to your pocketbook. They even sell a diaper bag.

There are three sizes. My collection consists of a big bag insert and four shells, two styles of shoulder straps. One piece de resistance is a little gizmo for hanging your pocketbook so that it does not have to touch the floor. This little item is aptly named, a Purse Hanger, and I recently added this gadget to my Miche assortment. Here is where I get to the becoming my mother part of this write. So here we are sitting outside Starbucks on a beautiful Saturday morning, and I reach into my purse for my purse hanger. My husband is staring at me with that “what the heck are you doing?” look. I dramatically unfurl the hook from the circle that stays on the table, and hang up my lovely Miche bag. It is now suspended about fifteen inches from the ground. No street dirt or grime will get onto my Miche unless it is airborne.

My husband is sipping his coffee and continuing to stare at me with a certain amount of disbelief written on his face. I smile broadly and say, “I am becoming my mother.” “Becoming?” he asks with a smile of satisfaction that shows that he thinks he has won some sort of verbal engagement. I acted as if I had not even heard him and went on to tell him how I used to think that my mother was such a geek back in the fifties when she hung her purse off one of these things. She had explained to me that floors in restaurants and other places where a woman might set down her pocketbook were very dirty, and this kept her purse clean. One of my Miche skins is camel colored fabric, and I did worry about it getting dirty. Then I noticed two of my friends had purse hangers. I immediately decided that I could not live without one. As I type it comes to mind that those friends and I are probably thirty years older than my mother was when she used one.

Now I am wondering how closely I have come to imitating the behaviors of my mother which I have observed over at least eighteen years of my childhood. It does not matter if you had a habit of satirizing or ridiculing the actions you saw it comes up like a monster to bite you when you least expect it. Now be honest, who amongst us have not used the momisms, “Because I said so!” or “I’m the Mom; that’s why!” I must confess I have my own version of this last one. However, on the whimsical side I have to own up to something. I have a license plate type of metal sign hung on the inside of one of my kitchen cabinets. It is black with pink letters that say, “I am the Princess, that’s why.”

I also have to deal with the discomfort of thinking that the “my-way-is-the-best-way-ALWAYS attitude” which leaves me feeling uncomfortable when someone else does something in a different way than I do. Whether it’s loading the dishwasher, folding laundry or cooking, I find myself feeling uncomfortable when someone helps me and does it differently than I do. It leaves me actually feeling uncomfortable. It is not that I am a perfectionist because I can be quite messy and lazy at times. So far, I have managed to keep my mouth shut and outwardly be accepting of the help.

Here is another thing I have been thinking of doing. In fact, I have already bought the needed “stuff” to do this. My mother always did it. If a blouse became dingy or she decided she wanted a different color she would dye it. I am the proud owner of a white renaissance style blouse. The problem is that somehow it has some beige stains that refuse to be washed away. So a couple of weeks ago I bought some navy blue dye. I am still chicken to do it, but I am almost ready to dye it. If I do dye my stained shirt I am one step closer to becoming my mother. One thing in the dye department I probably will draw the line on is using coffee or tea water to get a beige colored blouse like my mother did.

Sometimes when I was at my messiest my mother would say, “You know I think I brought the wrong baby home. I was not wounded by this, because I knew she was joking. Still I know that God’s word tells me,

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD,

“plans to prosper you and not to harm you,

plans to give you hope and a future."

Jeremiah 29:11

So even if she had brought the wrong baby home I could still rely on the fact that God had His plans for me. I believe that from all eternity God placed me in my birth family for His reasons. First and foremost is the fact that I was given to my parents to learn life skills from them. In the end, I feel that they taught me as well as they could. I was a reasonable student.

I have been thinking about why a person would become his or her parent when aging. I believe that in our early years we are ready to prove our independence. Some of this happens when we do things our own way. We develop our own ways of doing things and our own opinions, and we stick to them no matter what. Sometimes this causes a bit of a separation between us and the older generation. When we are in our thirties or forties and have some personal failures under our belts, we start to see that perhaps our parents might have known what they were doing and talking about. We start to mellow out, and we begin to appreciate what we had renounced earlier. Maybe being more like your parent is not so bad if you can keep it reasonable and maintain something of yourself to pass down to your own children.

Corinne Mustafa

June 26, 2011