It started a few years ago in the car.
We were barreling down the highway on our way somewhere and the two toddlers in the back were driving each other and myself absolutely batty.
And so I turned and started swatting at whatever legs I could reach, and said, "Don't you make me pull this van over, because I will do it!"
And as the words angrily left my mouth, I started grasping at them, desperately trying to remove them from the universe and shove them back in my mouth. Meanwhile, in slow motion, mental images rolled through my brain of many family trips in the suburban, barreling down the highway, my pigtails bouncing along with the car and my siblings and I so engrossed in our argument that we didn't even realize the car had stopped until one of us felt the back side of a brush on our own backside.
But try as I might, I couldn't undo those words that day. Nor did I want to. I just sighed, picked up my phone, called my husband and told him that I was "officially turning into my mother. And my father."
And my parents are not bad people to turn into.
In fact, I greatly admire the job they did of raising three semi-normal, educated, slightly sarcastic adults who have never been imprisoned or even arrested to my knowledge.
But that day was the start of morphing into these people who once upon a time had three crazy kids of their own.
And I remember as a teenager thinking, I will NOT be like them!
Why do they care if my room is messy? It's "my" room!
So I sent them a long-overdue apologetic text last night after battling it out with the diva over "her" room because I realize now just how stupid I was.
Hell no, that's not her room. Does she have a job? Does she pay to put food on the table? That's my room. She just gets to live there. Bless her little heart.
And technically Todd could say the same about me. But he doesn't. Because he's smart.
And my dad's response to my text?
"Payback's a bitch. But it wasn't all bad."
How true. Even with these battles over dirty socks, I wouldn't trade this life.
And in case you think I'm the only one in this house turning into my parents, you would be dead wrong. Dead wrong.
I chuckled silently to myself the other day as I watched Todd go put somebody's dishes in their bed because they failed to carry them over after dinner. And do I understand that punishment? Not exactly but I know it was one he learned from his own dad and apparently it works.
And again, I'm not complaining that we're turning into these people. We could do a lot worse.
This post is for my kid's benefit because one day when you're reading this and you're thinking "I am so so like not like gonna be like you and dad. Like my kids are like not going to have to carry over their dishes or clean their rooms or pick up dog poop or whatever. Like I'm going to be a cool parent."
I'm telling you now - you're wrong.
You're not going to be cool at all.
You're going to morph into me and your father and you're going to both love it and dread it and laugh about it all at the same time.
And I only hope I'm around to watch it.
And I can't wait for the apology 25 years too late for shoving orange peels under the bed.
What?! You didn't expect me to put them in the trash did you?
PS - I have an inkling that I know where the diva gets her messy tendencies.........
