Mom Dad and Me

All my life I thought I’d grow up to be my father. Funny, tall, hanging around on a set cracking jokes, artistic, smart. But then all my life I thought I’d grow up to be my mother. Laid back, raising kids, soft-spoken, loving, nurturing, the gentle back-scratcher.

Then today I was riding the horse I’m training, down Art Street in our neighborhood, a leafy, backroadsy kind of street, at 10 a.m., and I’m doing something that isn’t like what anybody does, just like me, what I do.

And I’m not the financial success my father is, cross that off. I’m not the emotional shipwreck my mother is, cross that off. I am happy, and nurturing and funny and tall. I am them, and me.

I wore the Clifford costume for school a few days ago, a big giant red dog suit with a big giant red head. I felt like I was still me, but people on the outside saw a big a red dog. I’m afraid that as I get older, my outsides will start to look different, like an old lady, maybe, to the people that see me on the outside. What if I’m still that kid on the inside, looking out those big red dog eye-holes, like I’m wearing a costume? How scary is that, if you just are figuring out who you are and what you do at 45? I didn’t get to wear the youth suit for very long.

All I know is, I’m in the middle of this hugely busy loud life, and today Nathan and Jonathan were walking into their old 5th grade classroom and pointing out nostalgically where they used to sit, and how the class used to be arranged, and how different it looks now, a year later, a year older, and they miss it because they were happy here. They’re happy now, but they’re happy here too.

I feel like being a mom is being plugged into everything with little time to remake or construct anything other than the people you are raising. So I was not able to successfully run a set, though I can write a funny story. And I was never as even-keeled as my mom was when she was a young mother, although I’m pretty satisfied with how I’m holding up.

I guess I’m finding what makes you happy and realizing that maybe you’ve been in the middle of it, creating it, for years, is also a version of success. And I have such amazing memories of being the girl with the special dad, and the girl with the gentle mom. I just ride the horse down the street at a slow pace and enjoy the swirl of colors that my life makes while I’m here, stirring it up.