Making Dinner

It's Friday and I am so grateful to have made it through another week. My new job is a huge, humongous challenge. After 3 weeks I am still trying to figure it out. They say we are pretty quick but I have never felt more slow. Knowing that the alarm clock is NOT going off at 6:30 tomorrow is pure freedom. The freedom to stay up late and read blogs!

I read several tonight about children. I am not sure what triggers memories in us, I just know that the older I get (and really I am not very old; which is in itself rather worrisome) the easier it is to remember the past and the harder it is to remember what happened yesterday.

Most of the time I just don't think about my daughter. It's too hard and too sad. My daughter is bi polar and an alcoholic and a crack addict. She is also funny and winsome, beautiful and charming, talented and creative; and she is my only child. Her children became my children and have their place. I love them. Sometimes when I see a photo of a sleeping child or read the antics of a two year old my mind goes back. To the days when my daughter was a child and an imp full of mischief. When her blue eyes and pink cheeks filled my vision, because she was all I had eyes for in those moments, the little cherub.

I was a stupid selfish mother. I'm not sure that I could have been anything else, I was 16 when she was born. Let me get up on the soap box and say there are no MATURE sixteen year olds. Kids are not ready to be parents, a lot of them still need skid mark lessons for themselves much less change a tiny diaper.

My conflict was my loneliness, which positioned itself into direct conflict with her needs. I chose me , and she would cry. Heartless and selfish I would walk away and forget, She would grow up and the ways she took revenge were so precise. She let me know she had kept score. Even made up things that weren't true.

I have drifted far away from where I wanted to begin, I wanted to tell you about my baby when she was 3. She was fascinated with glamour at 3. She loved it when my mom curled her hair.
She loved Texas. Her Nana had a mirror tray full of perfumes and she got to smell them all. She loved perfumes. I had quite a collection of it in my house, Her dad had bought it for me for gifts.
It was nice, it wasn't cheap. But how weird was that to give a young teen expensive perfume? I liked to party and have fun. It was the Bunserellie who loved all foo foo smells.

One day I came into the house and it was too quiet. Jen had a seriously cute bedroom. I painted the walls light yellow. She had a water bed, and beautiful long book shelves for all her treasures.
Everything had a place there,which she mostly ignored. I'd get busy and put it all away; big mistake; did we say huge yet?

Jenny was in her room and she was very quiet, this is a bad sign for a three year old. It means mom your in deep doo doo here, very deep. I slowly opened the door and saw all the cereal crushed together in a big pot, a pressure cooker to be exact. She had then added all the bottles of perfume to the dry mixture and was happily stirring her creation.

Why do we react without thinking? I went into my immediate mom roll. I told her she was naughty and she was in big trouble for getting into all the stuff and making such a big mess. Big trouble always meant getting it with a wooden spoon. So here we are, this little three year old bawling and crying, and me the big person carrying the big spoon to paddle her with. My mom spanked for every infarction. Somebody had to teach that girl not to ruin hundreds of dollars of perfume. I didn't like perfume,didn't wear perfume, and somehow spanking my child for playing with something that I didn't even like didn't make sense to me, but I was the mom and I had a duty to teach her what was right so she sorta got pattled. She had worse, but she was so upset she was nearly hysterical and just weeping.

My little tow headed 3 year old and looked up at me with crocodile tears streaming down her face. She was trying to talk and snuffle sniff at the same time, and she was obviously very upset.
She looked up at me with cheeks like a cherub and sobbed," Buuuuuuuttttttt Maaaaammmmmaaaa I was cookin dinner for you; don't it smell good? snif snuffle sob.

Have you ever shrunk where no rock can hide you? I busted out bawlin and called my mama. She was a little comfort, not much, because she thought it was a funny story.

Jenny and I sat down on the floor and she showed me what she was thinking, if you put all your favorites in a pot and then pour the best smelling things on them they will be good.
I asked her if she had tried to eat some. Not yet, and the happy little experimenter was anticipating the delicious surprise. Only a little taste, it might be weird. She took a bit and started spewing all over, caterwauling about her ruined dinner. It tastes just terrible momma,
how can anything smell that good taste that bad? Maybe because it wasn't made to be food,
but it was me that learned a lesson.