strength, she is a beauty

i told her that i admired her. that her strength is enviable. that i’m continually impressed by her ability to handle things thrown her way. i only wish i could be more like my mom.

i can’t divulge all the family’s skeletons, but know that there are many. not unlike a bazillion other people out there, my loved ones have been known to be fucked up in some capacity or other. families come to blows. families stake a claim in some element of dysfunction. but through thick and thin, my mom (and my dad, for that matter) has managed to stand there and do what she needs to do to hunker down and get ‘er done.

she is one of the few, methinks. how quick some of us are to bolt or pass judgment or look for an easier way out.

those close to me know that i’m a worry-wort. for better or worse, i try to manage things that don’t pertain to me. i try to manipulate that which is simply out of my control. i take on pain on behalf of my mother, my father, my sister, my husband, and countless others. perhaps this is rooted in the fact that during past jobs, co-workers have let me down, and i’ve had to pick up slack. i think it translates to interpersonal relationships. and it does to a degree, but i’m not superwoman nor do i want to be.

i expressed a concern to naz this morning on my way out the door. it was a passive-aggressive comment intended only for 8:30 am that escalated into a discussion that i wasn’t prepared to engage in. nothing bad, mind you, in fact, perhaps a good thing. because here i am, six hours later, replaying certain statements in my brain. what strikes me more is that passages from my last phone conversation with my mother are interlaced in my head. “you work through it.” “it always works itself out.” “there have been tougher times than these.”

and i wonder, how does she do it? and more importantly, why didn’t some of that trickle down to me? she doesn’t get off the hook that easy as patience and understanding can be a difficult beast to master. but it’s the strength that i want. the ability to stand back when things start to worry me, dispel any toxicity, simply recite, “it will work out,” and then do something i’m not prone to doing: let it go. release white knuckled fingers and wave good-bye and move on. that should be easy, right? sounds good in theory, we’ll see how i fare in practice.

11 June 2008