Truth or Consequences

When I was small, I imagined what my life would be. Like Cinderella I wanted to marry a prince. But I was far too realistic to imagine that I would live 'happily ever after'. I did read lots of books though, and from them gleaned many ideas about how I would live life in that long awaited time when I would be a grown up.

For instance, I read "Little Women". The mother in that book was the type of person I wanted to be. She served her community. She loved God. She loved her girls. She was strict, but not unfair. She seemed to have the wisdom to help her girls at just the right time. When her girls got into scrapes, she knew what to say and how to say it, so they would find the solutions for their problems.

The girls would go to her for this wisdom, or she would come to them. She spent many a time sitting at the side of their beds, her cool hand on their foreheads, admonishing them, encouraging them, caring for them, until they found their way again.

As I have grown up into growing up, I found I was not like that mother at all. Many days, it was all I could do to hold it together until the children went to bed again. I remember one particular occasion when, after yelling at the children, I answered the phone in the most normal voice I could muster. After I got off the phone, my son said to me "How come you're so nice to everyone else and you're so mean to us?" I wanted to scream "Because they don't pee on my seat!".

After such tumultuous encounters, I would retreat into my room (if at all possible) or inside my head. Recrimination would toll it's heavy bell in my conscience. I would be reminded of all my shortcomings. And I would think about "Marmee March" and wonder where my aspirations of being like her had gone. Why couldn't I be like her? Why did I continually struggle with being the polar opposite to what I had set out to do?

Recently, I was having a discussion about this topic with a co-worker. I explained how many times I disappointed myself with the way I had mothered my kids. I told her how I had wanted so badly to be like "Marmee" and instead, I was so much like "Marni".

Her response made a light bulb go off in my head. She laughed out loud and said "Have you ever heard of fiction?"