I came across an article today celebrating the imperfect mother. Wow! Did that resonate with me. If you think you are the perfect mom, just ask your kids. They will clue you in pronto on all the ways you failed and how you messed them up. And, of course, they are not going to make all those dastardly mistakes with their own kids. (Heh-heh, just wait.)I remember blaming my own mom. Hey, I became an adult in the 60s when it was mandatory to find somebody to blame for everything you didn't like about yourself. We were all victims of bad toilet training, or being forced to eat our carrots, etc. But then the lightbulb (finally) went on. You become an adult when you start taking accountability for yourself and stop blaming other people for your flaws. Why did it take so long for that reality to penetrate my thick skull? I guess I'm a slow learner.
Most parents are doing the best they can with the resources they have at the moment, their "lousy best" as my sister often says. Their parents weren't perfect either, after all. My mom raised ten kids amid constant change with no extended family around to help. Daddy was in the Navy and we packed up every three to four years to move to a new house in a new place -- sort of like the Mad Hatter's tea party on speed. Some kids keep milestones like what they did on such-and-such a birthday. I measure my life by the name of my street, the layout of the house, and the school of the year. At the time it seemed an adventure; in retrospect I wouldn't have wanted to rear my own children on the fly.
