More Important To Be Right Or Be Loved?

I am always amused and awed when I get an email from one of asking if I am okay. It makes me realize that I haven't blogged in a week or so and you are wondering if I have kicked the bucket. Blogging friends truly are wonderful. My regular friends can go months and not think anything of it. Kind of a sad commentary, no?

I think I mentioned that my mom has been watching the Oprah Network. Well, she has sucked me in, too. I like "the story behind the story" and I like shows that are digging for personal truth. Sort of like what I try to do here. If you are having difficulty in your life or your relationships, work it out. A show that is now ending on OWN is The Judds. Apparently Naomi and Wynona have had a volatile relationship forever. There are so many reasons for it and they get into all of them. I try to imagine being a teenager and having my mother for a mom and a boss. So not cool. That made the transition from mother-daughter to mother-friend an unnatural one. They love each other like crazy BUT...

I think about how hard it would be to work that out on television. On the other hand, if no one worked out their issues publicly, other people wouldn't have the opportunity to learn. If Chris didn't write her weight loss/life blog, no one else would have all that great information. If Phoenix didn't write her love each better blog, I wouldn't stop and think I could be doing that better. If Shoes didn't write his crazy ass blog, I wouldn't laugh every day. If JJ didn't write his philosophical stuff, what would I think about? If Lira didn't post her struggling actress tips for others, they wouldn't have that foundation. [I could go on and on about all of your great blogs but my hands would lock into position over this keyboard. ALL of you are amazing.] This is what we do for one another. We live our lives out loud for ourselves and other people. Some do it in writing and others on TV.

I have learned so many things watching Naomi and Wynona interact. First of all, people often are the most cruel to the people that they love most. Second, if there were a device to take words back, everyone would buy one. Third, revelation is a slow process. I think it is because you have to understand yourself before you can understand another. Think on that for a while. Yikes. Fourth, it is essential to speak your truth. Until you do that, you do not feel free. You are shackled by silence that eats your soul. It is only in speaking your truth at all times that you can remain free. That doesn't mean shouting it with the most pain and bitterness you can throw, but speaking it gently with the solidness of its truth. That is all.

Last night, Wynona said how important it was to her to be right. All of these years it has been so important to be right. She never saw before that if there were a choice between being right and being loved, being loved was so much better.

The answer here is not to cave in to everyone else on everything just so that you are loved and they feel good about themselves. That just makes you a doormat and you lose your truth (#4). However, everyone deserves to be heard and both can be right from their viewpoint. Acknowledging another person's rightness is okay, too. It is saying I hear and love you. And that is where Naomi and Wynona arrived. Some people never get there. One person is right and another is wrong. There cannot be two right viewpoints on the same situation that are different!

Look at what that little bit of learning did for their relationship. Now they can apply that to all of their relationships. Everyone who watched that show can start processing that in their relationships. Powerful stuff.

I called the kids on Saturday just to talk to them. I had been trying to get hold of H-Girl all week. I had talked to C-Man last weekend. My ex called me yesterday to wish me Happy Mother's Day. He told me that the kids said we'd talked the day before AND that they'd said they'd wished me HMDay then. I corrected him by telling him that I had called them, but nothing had been said about Mother's Day. After we hung up, H-Girl's cell rang. It was C-Man calling to wish me HMDay. He was rushed b.c. it was close to their bedtime. I thanked him and told him to go on and get ready for bed. I asked about his sister. She came to the phone, but she was clearly ticked off by her tone of voice. I asked her how she was, etc. I could tell that she was not going to say HMDay, so I just told her good night and she said good-bye. And that was that.

I sent my ex an email asking him not to do that in the future. The kids are old enough to know the holidays. If they want to call, they will. If they don't, they won't. But forced expressions of love are not love. And I am hoping that H-Girl unwittingly employed tactic number one on me. People are often the most cruel to the people they love the most.

THE DAY MOM GOT REAL

I just watched the video from HERE'S TO YOU THURSDAY that I dedicated to all of the moms with my mom. It made both of us cry. That was our sentimental Mother's Day moment. I just finished reading all of the blogs I follow. Almost all were about Mother's Day and were poignant and nostalgic. The truth is that being a mom is the job that never ends. It is also the job you will love the most, but will give you the most frustration and the most reward. Even though C-Man and H-Girl are not my biological children, I know that you can love other people more than yourself. It doesn't have anything to do with biology. I also know what it is like to love like that and lose them.... not to death, but to divorce. So, I could write a piece today from the perspective of a parent or a child. I know what both sides of that coin look like.


I want to tell you about the day that my mother became "real" to me. There was one day when I was in junior high school that my mother lost it for about thirty seconds, and I got to see her as a person, and not just a mom. At that time, we were driving to Zanesville (in Ohio) for me to see an allergist. I was having a really bad time with allergies, and there was an allergist there who was trying some alternative stuff that was actually helping. We were on our way home, which required getting onto the highway, and that involved merging into traffic.

Here comes the "getting real" part. Before I share this, I have to put it into perspective for you. There just isn't a more straight arrow than my mom. Period. Not only was there a no cursing rule at my house, there was a no word that sounds remotely like it could be a variation of a curse word rule at our house. So that eliminated things like frick, frack, ding, dang, durn, darn, etc. If you went there, you just had to keep on rolling with it. My brother got really good at this sort of thing when he got caught. He made up crazy words. Dingbingzingerpollywantacracker. And then he'd smile like a choir boy.

Back to the merging into traffic.... Apparently, when we merged some guy felt like my mom cut him off and he gave her the finger. I am not sure what about that hit her button. I know that she felt like she did not cut him and did not deserve the finger, but most days she would have just let this slide. Not today. She rolled down her window. And I mean she rolled it down by hand. It was wintertime and it was pre-electric windows. So, she applied some elbow work action to roll down the window, stuck her hand out the window, and GAVE HIM THE FINGER. And then she screamed as loud as she could, "TO YOU TOO, BUDDY!"

Meanwhile, I am in awe. Before this incident, I was enjoying the rare treat of a vanilla shake from McDonald's. It was now hanging by a thread in my hands. I was lucky I didn't drop it outright. I might have gotten the finger, too, because she was on a roll. Eventually, I remembered my shake and started working on that. It was a much safer pastime than commenting on what I had just witnessed.

In hindsight, am I glad that my mom had such a strict no cursing policy at home? Absolutely. Am I glad that my parents were/are the kind of people who don't incorporate that kind of talk into their everyday speech? A hundred times yes. Do I think you can turn it on and off at will? No. People who think that they can talk that way at work and with their friends, but not around their kids, are fooling themselves. They will slip and their kids will talk that way. Honestly, it is what it is with an adult. But a kid that curses is bad. They call it potty mouth because it stinks.

However, getting a glimpse of my mother as a person, and not just a mom, that was pretty awesome.