Hands
We hosted my parents for dinner last night as today is the old bat's my mother's birthday.
All went well, i made a roast chicken with lemons stuffed up its ass and coated with rosemary from my garden. The person who needed to feel cared about felt cared about. My dad drank prodigiously. Em came down from her room and was charming when necessary. All the usual stuff.
After dinner as i was listening to the Mister converse with my parents, i was looking at my mother's hands. Those are the hands that mine will look just like in 30 years.
I am beginning to feel at peace with the fact that although i look like my mother in the outside, i do not look like her on the inside.
34 comments:
I praise you for the effort, for I know it WAS an effort for you.
The chicken sounds de-lish, incidentally.
It sounds like your dinner went pretty well.
I will be SO glad when I get finished cleaning out my house and we can go to a normal way of life. I haven't even tried to move Huggy to Pat's house yet as I am spending most of the day down here & don't want to leave her alone for the first couple of days with the other two cats. We will all be doing better when this process is over.
I already have my mother's hands. They're arthritic and veiny, but they work all right.
We hosted a Mother's Day breakfast and I got a call the next day, remarking that "Tony knows how to host a meal." There was a lot of cheek biting, but I did not say, "It was his idea to have you." click.
Thank goodness you are NOT her! You are so much better!
Sounds like you did my favorite roast chicken recipe, Pollo al limón, which I actually posted about last March when I was recovering from the Bubonic Plague.
Hands... it's hard for me to accept the fact that anything about me resembles my mother, and I have come to the same grudging conclusion that I am my own person, in spite of DNA and in spite of who raised me.
Your internal beauty shines through in your writing. Your mother has missed an opportunity, by not bothering to get to know you. I'm sorry for that.
Dontcha wish we could pick our gene pools? Geez, I'm drowning in mine...but I'll keep my head above water long enough to redefine the important things about me.
Isn't is a wonderful feeling to know you have succeeded in not becoming your mother?
Yes, the chicken sounds delightful!
qt, thank you. It WAS and it was. :)
dick, have you considered just taking Huggy out and burning down the house? :) Just kidding, but i know how it is as i have moved many times in my life. Courage!
de, that is a classic story. And you have my admiration for not giving that reply. i would have been SO tempted.
toni, eh, i dunno if i'm better, but i like me better. So i suppose that counts, huh?
ortizzle, i am not sure that i didn't get the idea for the chicken from you. But i didn't do anything fancy other than the aforementioned violation of the chicken with lemons. I have spent a long time vehemently denying that ANYTHING i have is like my mother. But i look to much like her to continue on that path.
patches, she did miss an opportunity, and that is sad, but in the end, she loses more than i. (I am so mean!)
lisa, it is a wonderful feeling. Yippee!
Mmmm....ass-stuffed roast chicken...my favorite. :-)
Don't you hate looking in a mirror and seeing the person who hurt you staring right back?
I'm glad you are finding peace knowing how beautiful you really are.
You are a wonderful daughter.
I cook all my birds that way...lemon and herbs stuffed up its butt, brushed with olive oil and more herbs. That's how I want them to bury me, when the time comes. Kidding. Maybe.
I have my mom's hands. They startle me.
Having disagreed with my parents for decades, on everything, I find your open contempt refreshing. I try very hard to be nice and forgiving, but your anger is justified, and mine is too. Just because somebody is older does not mean everything they have done is worth respecting.
Mmm. I love lemons stuffed up the ass!
...Of a bird. A dead bird, not a live one. That would just be cruel!
Oh, yes! It's a wonderful time in life when we realize that, yes, maybe the outside, but, no, no, no, not the inside.
nancy, you shoulda been here. No i mean you really should have been here. That mirror thing is awful.
mona, thank you, but i can say in all honesty that i am not a wonderful daughter. I am an OK daughter. Your burial requests have been noted.
gary, it's extremely childish of me to be such a brat behind their backs. But, other than hurting their feelings, i can see no good that would come of being contemptuous to their faces. So like a good sneak, i talk after they've left. Brave of me, no?
tink, i think the acid in the lemon would sting something fierce!
I look at my father's jowls and I think "Oh crap! JOWLS!"
Your post is oddly passive-agressive.. you shoved those lemons up the chickens ass because you couldn't tell your mom to shove it up her ass. Impulse conntrol is a wonderful trait, though that steam is going come out somewhere.. Me I go the gym or I walk and walk and walk...
And don't forget to add that your hands are loving hands. That's important.
I'm SO genetically my biological father - his family is Scots down both sides (incidentally, so is my biological mother's, but I favor my paternal family physically). I am SUCH the architypal Scots woman - I'm short (5'2", but only when I'm feeling particularly good about my self) with thick bones (never broken a one!) and...erm... a low center of gravity. Sigh. Oh well.
I was adopted, so I'm lucky in that I get to CHOOSE which mother to be like- though there's really no contest.
p.s. nice new look, by the way...
You are a good good bloggist.
I want to know more about your mother. Can you direct me to old entries, or write new ones?
Or is it invasive of me to want to know more?
Meno, an interesting evening, (and bless that stuffed chook:))
Feeling peace is good.
I hope you get to have absolute fun and get to cut loose on your birthday...let it rip :)
Peace
Pam
I've got my Mom's hands, in a little box under the bed. I've also got her left ear, her spleen, and three toenails.
Sorry, couldn't help it. I do, however, love the new header/colours. Brava, dear!
My brother-in-law recently took some pictures of my two sisters and me together. We all pretty much think we look like our mother in our own special jowly way, but I also have the distinction of looking like Little Richard.
I am laughing so hard at myself that I have to go now.
I am sorry that your mother still resonates hurt and anger for you but I am amazed at how gracious you can be to her and how you have shown class and strength to have risen above her.
I'm not sure how I'd deal with that...probably still be crushed.
I look more like my father.. but it's the same principle. Perhaps there are some outside physical features we shared in common ~ but the internal stuff? No way! We might as well be from different planets.
Peace,
~Chani
lucia, because the outside is not the part we can do much about!
scott, i think oh shit, turkey neck! Bleh!
ttq, i also frequent the gym. No telling what could happen otherwise.
liv, what a nice thing to say. Thanks.
mrs.chili, i look very much, in the face, like my mother. But my body is all my dads. Well, almost all.
esereth, try this, and this. If you want to know more, ask. I know how to say no if i don't want to tell you.
pam, a chook huh? I love the language differences. Also, it was my mom's bd, not mine.
irrelephant, my brother sings s gruesome little song about "i hold your hand in mine, dear." with a similar theme. And thank you.
capacious, Little Richard? You are HOT!
moi, thank you, but you know, i want not always gracious as a teenagerm that's for sure!
Thank God, we are not our hands (or our mother's hands for that matter).
Interesting new look you have here...even with the new look of the blog, you still have your mother's hands, and you are still you;~)
dude. the new digs. i love it.
and chicken lemon ass. sounds fitting somehow. sour on the inside. (not like you)
Glad you managed to get those lemons up the old bird's backside.
I had a similar pang of horror when I noticed my mother's cleavage earlier this year. It looks like an Austrian blind.
I once wrote an entry on my Mom's hands and how mine have the beginnigs of looking like hers....but in my case, I could only aspire to be like her on the inside. (she is a saint...lol...but really, she is something else)
"I am beginning to feel at peace with the fact that although i look like my mother in the outside, i do not look like her on the inside." congratulations.
I am glad to read that you are realizing that one is not predisposed to being just like their parents. That's a mighty step.
I hope my two daughters don't feel about me the way I did about any possible resemblance to my own mother, but realistically, that is probably too much to hope for.
I thought that my mother was physically beautiful, but still did not want to turn into her. Our insides were deeply different (and opposed) in many ways.
From everything I can discern from your writing, you have made a conscious decision to be a different kind of mother, and Em is very lucky to have you. I suspect that she knows it, too.
Oh man, I know exactly how you feel all the way through this entire post. It's like you were in my brain. I haven't visited your blog in awhile but I am reading through it and I see I've been missing out - alot. I'll be back.
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