YOUR PARENTS

Karma's A Bitch (A Little X-rated)

There’s definitely one thing I realized as I grew older: I did not appreciate my mother as much as I should have when I was younger. Matter-of-fact, I thought she was kind of kooky.

Once she painted a window on our powder room wall with a human face peering through it. And, I guarantee you, she never saw a stain she couldn’t turn into a colorful iris or daisy. In her last few months of life, while she was battling cancer, she was still trying to figure out how to paint ivy vines around the huge crack that had appeared in her driveway.

My mom was definitely the colorful glue that held our family together. Today I’m republishing a blog I wrote before I had many of you as subscribers. It is in honor of my mother who died 15 years ago — today — and all the other mothers who never got the recognition they deserved when they were alive.

This lighthearted story titled “Karma’s A Bitch” ( a little X-rated) illustrates another truth I’ve learned as I aged. See if you agree…

~~~

When I was a young person, I actually thought older people shouldn’t drive. As a kid, I remember being horrified the time my grandmother drove up a steep hill with her emergency brake on, and smoke poured out from under the hood of her car.

During midlife, I was still nervous about older people driving. For nearly twenty years my mom would pick my sister and me up at the Ft. Myers’ airport for our week-long retreat on Sanibel Island. Every year my husband would call me just as my mom turned onto Tree Line Drive and ask, “Is she in the left-hand lane yet?”

I would always laugh, wink at my sister and answer in code, “Yep, we just LEFT the airport.”

A seasoned beach-goer my mom knew there were two more left-hand turns on our 25 mile trek to Sanibel so she insisted on driving slowly in the left lane the whole way. Each time a younger driver sped by us on the right shouting obscenities or flipping us off, my sister and I tried to hide our faces. We knew our eighty-year-old mother was going to yell “Asshole” out the window.

The US Census Bureau says novice drivers cause significantly more car accidents than seniors. Well, who knew my mom was safer than that kid who passed us on the right?

Personally though, I still watch out for older drivers. I’m not taking any chances. That’s why when I was at Wal Mart the other day, I pulled forward out of my parking space really slowly. I don’t know where it came from, but a car suddenly appeared on my right. The young driver honked his horn, rolled his eyes and flipped me off

“Asshole.”

It’ll Be OK.

“ My slow transformation into my mother has somehow picked up speed.” ~Lisa Newlin

COMMENT: DO YOU HAVE ANY OF YOUR PARENTS’ CHARACTER TRAITS?

That’s Good To Know: There’s Humor in Aging — the paperback book with all my earlier blog entries — is still available on Amazon. Check it out at this link.