Visits and Visitors and Guests... Oh MY!

Well May is just my lucky month, in addition to the Chief's visit, yesterday my sister- mom called to say she and the California/Oregon crowd were coming through on their way to the Indy 500. Whenever I see her or hear from her, I stop being a middle aged mother of five and become, once again, the girl she raised. I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm glad I had the kind of role model I see as the same intelligent, organized and efficient woman now as I saw then.

I have several girlfriends who are still walking around in their middle age railing against their mothers, or blaming their mothers for whatever insecurities or character flaws they have. There are enough ways to have your joy stollen in this day and time, why would someone choose to continue chewing on their childhood? On paper, mine wasn't the greatest childhood. Sister-mom wasn't so good at hugs and kisses, or understanding teenagers. She was just a might controlling and a clean freak (my polar opposite). The very fact that I was raised by a sister instead of my natural mother (who was alive and relatively well but going through some kind of mid-life crises, for all eighteen years of my childhood). But those are not the things I took away from my youth. Both of them, my mother and my sister, did the best they could with what they knew then. In my sister's case, she stepped above and beyond the bounds of duty, she was too young to have a sister to raise. From my earliest memories, with her, was the only place I wanted to be. She was there for me, with rules and advice and structure. There is no more you can ask of a parent but that they try their best, and she did.