my mother's dying wish

My mom and I had not a tumultuous relationship, but not a real close one either.  For the most part, she was a good mother, but I was the polar opposite of her.  I think mostly I just contributed to her gray hair and wrinkles.  In other words, I was probably a huge pain in her ass.  Not an easy girl to raise, let's just say. 

Her dying wish was, "I hope you get one just like you".  Meaning she was trying to curse me with an equally rotten daughter.  Of course, I was naive at the time and my response to her was, "I hope so too....because I'm awesome".  My thought process was that I would be a way cooler mom than she was.

So, after I birthed two sons and saw an inkling of how hard parenthood was, I cut my losses and got my tubes tied, out of fear that I'd have that [said] daughter.  I figured I'd dodged a bullet and was mentally flipping my mother the bird.  'Ha ha...instead of a rebellious, emotional wreck of a daughter, I got 2 adorable boys. How dya like me now?' 

Fast forward to 2010.  I have one who is about as emotional as any 15 year old girl and another one who wouldn't think twice about stealing my car to go pub crawling.  Joke's on me.  I have been reincarnated in both my children.  Although each one looks nothing like me, each have inherited my worst attributes.  Bless their hearts....  Of course, at the time, I didn't think my laugh-in-the-face-of-authority, poor judgement and blatent stupidy were necessary bad traits----but now, I fully admit that raising me had to be a nightmare. 

You win, mom.  Happy?  My oldest is going to break my heart with his emotional roller coaster.  He's so me.  Nothing is good enough, everything is catastrophic and a stubbed toe will inevitably  ruin an entire week.  My youngest never thinks of consequences, he's impulsive and not terribly bright, but always the life of the party.  (it's always the idiots that make the most friends)

Here's me. Waving my white, surrender flag.  I apologize to my mother in heaven for every night that she waited up for me.  For her having to hold my hair back while I puked.  For lying to the police about her beating me.  For running away from home, because I didn't want to be grounded and miss a party.  For the endless parties at her house.  For watering down her whiskey.  For watering down her peach schnapps.  For stealing her Virginia Slims. For terrorizing her husband.  For being an all around impossible daughter. 


Here's the thing, mom....I'm not as tough and rough around the edges as you were.  Please be kind to me and disarm the curse that is upon me.  My boys are great and all....but give 'em 5-10 years and I'm screwed.