Happy Mother's Day!

     My mother passed on March 1, 1989, and I miss her more every day. She practiced tough love. In fact, I used to hate her for the restrictions she placed on me. Until the day I left home, I was not allowed outside after dark. I had to be in bed by 10:00 p.m. She made me do everything myself, often over and over, until the thing was done right. She would sometimes have public outbursts that embarrassed me (but made me more likely to behave when we were in the public eye. I would take a beating over being embarrassed in public any time). If I had an issue with a teacher, I had to handle the matter myself, as my mother refused to get involved. By the time I was a teen, my mother and I had screaming matches on a daily basis. What was the result of my being raised by this tyrant? My mother did not have to push me from the nest. At the age of 18, I fled from it, only to discover that my mother was right about so many things. The world is a tough place, and my mother made me tough enough to survive it on my own. My failed first marriage, my journey as a single mother, my years with an difficult employer - I never would have survived these difficult trials if I had not be toughened up by Mom's refusal to coddle me. Only after I recognized that fact was I able to remember and treasure all the hugs and kisses I had somehow forgotten.