I never much gave any thought to what kind of Mama I'd be, because really it didn't seem like a role I could fill with much integrity. As a twenty something with a career and good times with friends and family , I tended to think about parenting in the future tense. We'd get around to it sometime..there were plenty of years to be tied down later. In the year of our Lord 1984, all of that changed when I was blessed with a daughter named Lauren Elizabeth. Lab testing was much less accurate at that time and I remember watching the gamma counter with the digital truth flashing "pregnant" numbers and not believing it. Reference testing proved that I was, indeed, knocked up. Those nine months are filled with memories of fatigue, tomato soup with pepper and broccoli smothered in cheese. My favorite Chinese joint filled the bill on the egg roll craving. Each time we went in, Soon Li gushed over the unborn diva who grew to love meat and veggies all mixed up and piping hot from the wok. I waddled the halls of that damned hospital with a tray on my hip until a couple of days before she was delivered with the aid of forceps. One of the few regrets in my life is that I sold my soul to a career instead of staying home with my baby. Our support system was strong enough that I could work any of all three shifts that the job required while hub worked nights, and she'd never know anything other than being loved by friends and family doing the relay thing. Year after year we did this juggling act. Before I knew it, she was a teenager who hated me because I made her accountable and reminded her to remember who she was. Those years are a blur to me now, but there were times when I just knew that I'd lost her for sure.
When she was a senior in high school, we spent hours tag teaming on a term paper about hospice and death with dignity. It was a wild hair that I got after years of watching people suffer and die in the hospital at the mercy of a system based on money rather than compassion. She walked in my shoes for a few months at work and said " to hell with this." I'm so proud of her for doing that...she's meant for much greater things than playing the game that her Mama has played to pay for her Abercrombie and Fitch duds.
When she was four years old, we moved out to the farm where I spent my childhood. BabyGirl grew into a woman knowing that deer prance in the fog and you better watch out or you'll run smack into one like she did. Coyotes howl during cold rainy nights and faithful gals should be not afraid, for the Lord is with them always. Me and her Dad parted ways painfully when she was just a pre-teen. The animals that she loved left unexpectedly for the great kennel in the sky. Screamer the cat gave birth to an entire basement full of kittens with fleas. Penny was a gift from Miss Dottie at school. Pepper was the pup that I picked from a litter of blue heeler mix rollin' around in the dirt at Cheryl's place. When Lauren came home from two weeks in the woods at Girl Scout camp, Pepper greeted her in the front yard. He grew up to enjoy leisurely rides and stolen hot dogs on a golf cart. That boy could chase a ball like nobody's business.
This is not about dogs and cats, though. It's about growing up BabyGirl. It's a fortunate kid who knows that both her Mama and Daddy love her enough to give her roots and wings and a training manual to boot, in the form or our own distinctly checkered pasts. One of her first reality checks came the night that she and Heather snuck out of the house to go joy-riding. At thirteen, Heather was more mature than many adults because she had helped her Mom raise three younger siblings. I never gave it much thought when a girlfriend spent the night because our house was just the place to be. This particular night, the phone rang at one thirty in the morning and I wondered groggily why the girls hadn't answered it. It was crazy obnoxious Drew calling for his friend LP. After I hung up, I went to her room to investigate and found a bed that SEEMED to be occupied by two forms. My hands found the bodies and patted them only to discover that there were pillows and stuffed animals under those covers and no girls anywhere in sight. By four AM the sheriff's department was called and a deputy was dispatched to our place just in time to get the facts before they made their grand re-entry. Heather knew exactly where they had been left in a parked car while the older boys went to a house to party. She and her buddy sat there in the dark and smoked cigarettes and slept until the party was over. Then they traced their way back home to face the music. It was a long day at work for me that day, but we headed to church to see the Easter play afterwards. Tears streamed down their faces and mine as we watched the drama of the ultimate sacrifice of a child by a parent.
The day that she got her driver's license, I pinned a guardian angel onto the dash of my Mama's old car and she took off into the real world, free from the restraints of my control. I sat on the steps and sobbed as she drove away , knowing that times would get rougher. It didn't take long. There were numerous brushes with the local police who were intent on breaking out of boredom by harassing teenagers. By being at the wrong place at the wrong time during her senior year, a deranged cop's obsession with one of her friends ended her in junveile court on a drinking under age charge. The state mandated early intervention program included six months probation, loss of driver's license and community service as a garbage picker upper. Senior prom fell during that time, as did graduation from high school. Thank goodness there was a boyfriend in the picture who had wheels!
She is a volatile mix of the best and the worst of her father and me. Her kindness and generosity of spirit are paralleled by the stubborn streak that indignantly stands up for underdogs and those who are being treated unjustly. She procrastinates like me and comes through at the last moment with a bang most every time. Her father's cooking expertise is combined with mine and her work experience to produce skills worthy of a four star chef. She feels both pain and joy with every fiber of her soul. And she never stops learning new things. Because if you do, the fun of life is over and it becomes drudgery.
I remember distinctly that life had some form of order to it until the kid learned to walk. After that, it all turned into a one-day-at-a-time adventure with our wills struggling against each other..a duel to the death of dependence and independence. I think that we both got what we were fighting for in the relationship that we now cherish as a mother and daughter who always remember where we came from, and who we are.
