May, the month of Mother's Day, has ended up being quite a busy month for us, though I was able to spend the holiday with my mom. We had a very pleasant day sitting at the baseball field, in what feels like one of our only sunny days this month, just chatting and watching my son Owen play.
Later that night, I was watching television with my kids after my mom had gone home, and I started critiquing the shows we were watching with how unbelievable certain situations were. My kids started giving me a hard time and told me I was just like Grandmother. And I realized that they were right.
I am turning into my mom.
There's an old saying that when a man is dating a woman, he should look at her mother to see the woman he will eventually be with, and I think there is a lot of truth in those words. The more I thought about my mom, the more I saw the similarities between us.
When I was growing up, my mom really tried to make us healthy and nutritious food, way before organic and whole foods were popular. There was no sugary cereal for breakfast, no Kool-Aid with dinner, and my sandwiches were always on 100 percent whole-wheat bread. And for every meal at home, she would sprinkle wheat bran on our foods because it was high in fiber and was a good way to fight cancer.
I hated that bran.
However, I'm sure my kids will reminisce one day about the fact that I used tomatoes in most of my cooking and I was always urging them to eat them because they were high in lycopene, a cancer-fighting agent. And while I do enjoy some Captain Crunch cereal from time to time, we only have water with dinner, and sandwiches are made on healthy bread.
My mom was always my biggest cheerleader. She came to every game and could be heard shouting my name from the sidelines. At the time, I thought it was the height of embarrassment to hear her yelling "Go Jilly" for every move I made. My kids frequently cringe at how enthusiastic I am at their sporting events. My oldest son, Quinn, had to ask me to quiet down a little in the stands, as I was the only voice that could be heard when they were reviewing their game tapes during practice. I guess this apple didn't fall far from the tree.
Whenever we took car trips as kids, my mom would "ooh" and "aah" over the magnificent scenery. She would constantly be telling us to look out the windows and see the beauty of God's handiwork. I had no time for it. Now I am the one telling my kids to stop looking at their phones and see how amazing it is outside. And they are the ones quickly glancing outside and then going back to whatever they were doing, clearly not overly impressed by the wonders of nature.
My mother is notorious for mixing up presents at Christmas or sometimes losing presents all together. It isn't unusual for her to be looking around with a puzzled look on her face when the unwrapping is finished and she will tell someone that they have another gift somewhere but she isn't sure where it is. This isn't always a bad thing, as that person might end up with a Fourth of July gift.
This year I lost my first gift. I know I bought it. I know I put it somewhere, but I could not find it anywhere. Well, I just told that child to expect a bonus summertime gift. Hopefully I will find it by then.
I expect this metamorphosis to continue. And I'm not really upset by that at all. My mom is an amazing woman, and I would hope to someday be half the woman that she is. After all, a loudly enthusiastic, healthy-eating, gift-losing, nature-loving person is a pretty great person to be.
Jill Murphy writes from Manchester. Her column appears on the last Sunday on the month.
