My Mom

A Boy and His Bear. Lucas is winding down for bed telling him all about his day while his Mommy puts new sheets in his crib.

Growing up I always felt closer to my Dad. It's not that I didn't love my Mom just as much but my Dad and I have similar personalities and senses of humor. Since Lucas' birth though every day I see myself slowly turning into my Mom. Now it is rare for a day to go by when I don't call my mom to ask her a question, get advice, or excitedly tell her "he put his foot in his mouth all by himself!"

My Mom is the kind of person that will do anything for anyone. Growing up it wasn't surprising to come home and find some stranger that needed a place to stay bunking in with us for a night or a few days or for even longer. My mom gives rides to strangers she will use whatever money she has to buy food for someone that is holding a sign asking for money because they are hungry. I remember one time when we lived in Texas and I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. It was the day after Halloween and my bag of candy was in our car. My Mom saw a family in a van asking for food and she didn't have anything else to offer them so she gave them my Halloween candy. Growing up she also tried to convince us to have Birthday parties and ask our friends to bring us canned goods to donate instead of bring birthday gifts. At Holidays there is always someone we haven't met yet that doesn't have any family in town so they are invited to spend Thanksgiving or Christmas with us. At Christmas she would also give to every single salvation army bell ringer she ran into even if she had just donated at another store an her before. When I was younger I thought my mom was just wasting her time and sometimes I would be really annoyed but I've come to love her for it. That is just the way my mom is and when other people would judge a person because of their race or their past all my mom sees in a person.

Because of my mother I've always felt compelled to drop change in the salvation army red bucket (more out of guilt than charity though I think) and when a telemarketer calls I always listen to their speech and politely turn them down instead of hanging up on them or cutting them off, but that was as far as I would go... that is until today.

I found myself (and Lucas) being woke up from a nap by a knock on the door and Jadie barking at the Window. I looked out the peep whole first seeing our resident crackwhore (okay so I'm not quite there yet Mom but I have my reasons) standing on our porch. To be fair I don't know if she does crack... but lets just say I know the other part is pretty much true. When we first moved in here she knocked on our door and Curt answered. She offered to cut our grass for $10 or ummm service him orally for $5.00. Curt politely declined both offers and shut the door. I wanted to "politely" say something to her then but Curt wouldn't let me go outside. A few weeks later we saw her get into a parked car with a man and disappear... in the morning... a few feet away from a bus stop... so anyway. . A few times over the past two years she has had the nerve to knock on the door and ask me for rides. She is always cracked out on something and I've always told her no.

So why today did I open the door and agree to give her a ride up the street especially now that I have Lucas? I'm not sure. (I partly blame my Mom and her half of my genes. ) She told me some sob story about how she had to drop off medicine for her son at his Dad's house and how she lived with her mom and her son lived with his Dad because her son is mixed and her Mom doesn't approve. She was holding this big bottle of what looked like penicillin in one hand and a lit cigarette in another. Since it was 2 minutes away I agreed.

While I was getting Lucas in his car seat she ran back to her mom's house to "get more of his stuff" and returned with a trash bag full of can cokes (I know because she checked to make sure they hadn't busted and I saw them) she was no longer carrying the medicine that I could see. She was for sure on something and just kept spouting off about how she was 31 and had 5 kids and was 14 weeks pregnant with twins (and then asked if she could smoke in the car, I said no) I politely nodded. She went in dropped the bag off and came back out to the car. On the way back she told me she was concerned about me driving a "jeep" with a baby in the car. When she got out of the car she told me that her name was Candy (figures) and if I ever needed anything she would be there for me.

From now on I plan on sticking a "SHHH Baby sleeping" sign on the door and just not answering it. As you can see I have a hard time saying "no" to people. While I admire my Mom for the way she is I know she does things out of a pure want to help people. I just don't want to hurt peoples feelings. Afterwards I realized how dumb it was to give her a ride... I know she'll come back now. Also who knows what she was picking up? I'm still not even close to believing her story about her sick son. She could have gone crazy on us because of what she was on or a million of other things. I think from now on I'll just stick to doing nice things for people I know... and telemarketers.

The highlight of my day was when Lucas (the baby who has only spit up 4 times in his 4 months) spit up all over his body fluid phobic daddy... and I'm not just talking a little clear drool... it was white chunky spit up all over both of them... it just made me smile for so many reasons...

Then about twenty minutes later he shared the same present with me. I think it was the water he drank from his little baby cup. He drank it really quickly and almost choked some of it down. I'm sure he swallowed a few gulps of air.