Mom and I

This afternoon my mom and I went to see a movie together. We laughed, we cried, we ended up in an intense argument and we said 'I love you' and left.

We're fairly close, she and I. We talk nearly every day. Sometimes about nothing, sometimes about everything. Still, I think there's something neither of us will ever 'get' about the other. I'll constantly be trying to convince her there's another side to everything while she'll rarely accept that there actually is.

My God, how I love her. The things I've seen her do in her life are not of the weak-hearted. She'll teach you a lesson or two, I tell you. She continues to teach me. That along with making me feel better, reassuring me constantly and giving me advice (solicited or not) should be enough to get a daughter by. Somehow though, I have this problem. This problem of wishing it were different and all the while, knowing it will never be.

It's bad, I know. I don't want another mother, I want my mother, but just tweaked a little. I want her to see my life through my eyes and I know that's not possible. I know the eyes she sees through... the no B.S., get to the point, why cry when you could just "get over it" eyes. Damn them. She'll never see through my eyes. She'll wonder though. She'll wonder how a girl can get so emotionally involved in everything in her life. She'll wonder how I can be so accepting of all the world and not of her. She'll wonder how I can be generous with others when I "don't really have it to give." Yes, she'll wonder. But she'll never see it. I don't know if she's not willing or just can't. I may never know.

And all I want to ask is: Why? or Why not? How did she raise me and yet, we're polar opposite on feelings? She has them, I know she does and yet, with me, she doesn't. Am I too much or is she too little? Of course, I'm inclined to believe it is I who is gifted with these feelings. It is I who gets to use my heart and soul as if they're commodities, as if I have every emotion and bit of passion to spare and will do so, with very little convincing. And with that thought, I'm forced to see the difference between she and I. A difference that may not have always been there but has been forced by time and experience. Is it possible she doesn't have the time and emotion to spare? Maybe she once did only to learn that time and emotion don't feed children, work does. Maybe she once believed that there was a time to laugh and a time to cry, but those times passed and have yet to come around again. Maybe this is her version of happy and it's me that's missing the point. After all, she says she's happy. Who am I to question her?