Shaken, Not Stirred

The thing about a nickname (and in this case, a convenient alias I can use when I write online) is that sometimes they stick. A recent example was meeting who is now the husband of an adopted sister, and had to apologize for using the name Trex anointed him with since that’s all I ever heard him referred to as.  Mind, said name is the Greek translation of his own, but still. He laughed heartily and said it was OK, because he kind of always called Trex…well…Trex.

Trex and I have a decent relationship and I know that is a fortunate outcome. Given the course of our lives, it could have been drastically different. As she wraps her head around the notion that my existence is in its third decade, our relationship goes the way of many- it grows. In the course of it doing so, she’s candidly spoken to me about her wondering how well she’s done as a mom. When I’ve gone through some crap and talked her about it, there’s a part of her that wonders if there was something more she could have done in my formative years. I remember well parsing the topics she broached; if I felt as if I was treated differently, or thought an aspect of my childhood was weird or found wanting. She’s wondered that since she was Zi’s primary care-giver, had I been left behind despite her best efforts. I’ve been so self-contained since I was a wee bairn, that she’s wondered by letting it be, that it may have stunted me in a way. You have to love the logic of a child because I always seen it as Zi was sick. And when you’re sick, you get taken care of. Usually that was Trex doing that. Trex took care of Zi when she was sick, and she got better. That’s how it worked. And when Zi was raring to go outr and play and have adventures, all was right in the world again.

Dad gone on deployment for months at a time was Dad going off for his job. He’d send letters and post cards, we’d reply in return and wait for the next one. We’d be over the moon when he was back and excitedly spout off at a hundred miles an hour of things that happened while he was gone, trying to cram months of things into minutes. There was nothing inherently weird about it. In fact, I still don’t feel that way- that because it didn’t fit into some formulation, it had to be weird. It wasn’t.

What was a bit weird was telling my mother, ‘ya done good; ‘ to remind her I make my own way and have been able to for a very long time and that is directly attributed to her. And if she finds me to be a decent human being, it’s largely due to the fact that I had a pretty good role model. Mother’s Day usually gets regulated to just a day- it’s close to Zi’s birthday and for a while, it was a hard day. Zi and I always did something for Trex. We saw how hard she worked after dad died to run the house, to see that we had what we needed. We saw her hard at her studies when she went back to school, how she managed to make sure we were able to keep to our commitments, be they a sports team or band, or colorguard. We tried to not limit our thanks to just one day, but we weren’t angels all the time. We were just as every bit a Sassy McSasserpants as teenagers can be. In the years after Zi was gone, Trex and I co-opted it into one of our ‘Girlie Days,’ where we spent the day out and about dong whatever caught our fancy. It usually entailed a lunch and it was largely ‘our time’ to catch up, wax philosophical, solve the world’s problems, exchange stories, and much to her delight, remind me of things I used to do when I was little. I think she enjoyed my ‘You’re funn-you’re serious?!omgIdidnotDOTHATawaywithmenow.’

Here lately I also have been making my own cards because you get one with the sentiment you want. So while I was making a post-card sized set of directions for a post-shave-pamper-yourself concoction I put together thanks to this tumblr post [it’s AMAZING], I also made her her card. I asked if I could share it because I think her thoughts about how she did aren’t so dissimilar to other parents/guardians. Trex didn’t mind. She even noticed the post-mark I hunted down to shop onto it.

It reads:

Mom,

I am so very fortunate and blessed that when the things shook out of the Cosmos, I was to be your daughter and you, my mother. That we have the relationship that we have, that I have such an incredible role model to learn from, that I share in a long and proud line of strong, decent human beings that happen to be women. I’m proud of it. I’m proud of you. I know it seems that the Universe constantly comes by to give you another shake down, but please, in those moments, remember this card. Remember its predecessors. And then tell it to go fuck itself.

You’re my Goddamn Hero, I love you.