Motherhood Moments: Love Means Having to Say You're Sorry - ParentDish
I loved how [my mother] looked. I loved how she smelled. I loved how she read. I loved how she refused to cook, telling my brother once, when he complained of a variation on Campbell's tomato soup, "You know, the first thing you need for pot roast is another mother." I loved how she adored me and absolutely believed I would be a sensation. What I didn't love about her was that she regularly drank herself from Mama Jekyll to Mama Hyde, with a stop along the way at Mrs. Robinson. And even that would have been OK: She was just outrageous enough that flirting with the band at weddings (even if the band included my boyfriend) verged on tolerable. After the flirting and the dancing (she could dance; she could even still do a handspring, at the age of 50, although she would have considered the idea of exercise for its own sake a joke), there came another stage. It was when there was more lipstick on the filters of her cigarettes than on her lips, and, along with the lipstick, she left the editor on what came out of her mouth. She was a sad clown then, a Pierrot with streaked mascara, and she was dangerous. And even that, while not OK, would have been bearable, if she had ever, ever once, even once, said that she was sorry. . . . More: http://www.parentdish.com/2011/05/06/motherhood-moments-love-means-having-to-say-youre-sorry/