It's official: I'm my mother.

   For the last nineteen years I have seen her creeping in my psyche.  It started out small and more universal, like making my kids eat their vegetables and wash their hands before dinner.  Then, it progressed to sayings.  My favorite was "You made your bed now you lie in it."  Back then, I was like, what??   And don't get me started on how many sayings she messed up ("A bird in the hand is worth a penny saved!") to which my siblings and I would laugh and call her a "foreigner."  The irony here is that I am not a foreigner, but I too mess up expressions and my husband smiles and says, "Ok, Cecilia" (my mother's name).
  My mother used to get so mad at was me gossiping on the phone.  She would initially walk by and give me a knowing look, a cross between a smirk and a scowl.  It would bug me to no end because I thought she was budding into my business (I'm middle-aged remember--no cell phones then and less privacy).  Part of me thought she was being curious but then the admonition would come to either quit gossiping or get off the phone.  Like, what nerve!  Fast forward and I have told my daughters the same thing.  If you are talking about someone behind their back to someone else, rest assured they are doing the same thing behind yours.
   I remember her driving us to school if it rained.  We usually walked but if it rained, we got to be chauffered.  Trust me, we would've rather gotten wet because she would drive us in her pajamas, housecoat and slippers and we would slink back in the car.  We would plead with her to drop us off at the driveway to the school, but no, she insisted on dropping us off right in front of the commons filled with hundreds of cooler kids.  I confess, I am cooler than she was but I too have driven my kids to school in my pj's.
   Then she got bigger than just a part of my psyche.  Take tonight for example.  A bunch of kids at my house (for Bible study no less) and all is well.  I'm doing my thing downstairs, watching "House" and minding my own business.  The Bible study ends, the kids are leaving and all of a sudden I hear the deep "boom-boom" of rap music blaring outside my suburban window.  I take a deep breath.  Not my cup of tea (see, she is so in my psyche) but I can deal with it.  But then I hear tires screeching and the music blaring and the tires screeching again and I've had it!  I march myself out of my house, walk past the other kids who are looking at me as if I'm wearing polyester and I tell those boys to knock it off and go home as I watch a few neighbors coming out of their homes looking at us like we're in the middle of a gang war. To my daughter's credit, she only once told me that she would handle it as I walked across the street to the cars with the "boom-boom" bass and the burnt rubber.  She didn't say a thing afterward as I told her that I am sure she was embarrassed but they were being very disrespectful and rude.  And as I walked into my front door, it was official.  I am now my mother.  Without the polyester.