happy [belated] mother's day.

[Warning: introspective post. Do not read if you're anti-introspection.]

I used to be a lot like Dad. When I was younger, people used to comment in equal numbers that I looked like either Mom or Dad; my temperament, however, was absolutely Dad. We were both stubborn in the same way, driven in the same way, and angry in the same way.

I'm not sure when or why this changed, but I've been realizing recently how much like Mom I've become. I don't mean physically, although once I hit puberty everyone agreed that I looked like Mom (and not just because of the boobs and hips thing). You know the expression "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree?" I'm not entirely sure this apple has actually fallen from the Mommy tree.

From the way I react to people and situations, through my values and morals, to my habits and rituals, I am my mother. I'm writing about this now because, although my awakening has been happening for the past few months, it was thrown into relief over the past week; primarily because Harry and I have been dogsitting for the past week, but also because I just moved into a new apartment. The dog thing is pretty simple. Even though it's technically Harry who's dogsitting, and he's wonderful about it, when I've been there I've been the one who gets up in the morning to take her out for a walk, the one who defends her when she's been bad, the one who has a hard time not feeding her people food, the one who calls her pet names, etc. Moving into the apartment has been another eye-opening thing; specifically, this morning I had to stop myself from taking my cup of coffee (black, obviously, because that's how Mom drinks it) into the bathroom and leaving it on the counter to get cold while I showered, which is what Mom does. These two examples fall into the "habits and rituals" category, and as children learn from their parents, I suppose it's not surprising that I am copying what my mother would do in these situations. However, it's not just in this area that I look to my mother for what to do. I'm not entirely comfortable giving examples of the other two categories, because that's way too personal to put online, but if you know me and Mom, you know that there's a good chance we would deal with a problem the same way, we would give to our friends and family the same way, and we would value the same things in the people around us.

Even though I can no longer call my mom ever day (damn international phone rates!), she's absolutely here with me, in Paris, all the time. She's not looking down on me, like someone who has died; she's HERE here, inside me. I can't escape her.

I'm so glad.