The nut doesn't fall far from the tree

I am my mother's daughter.

Mom, me, Great-Grandma B, Grandma F.
1975ish

Mom

My father and my husband are more than willing to remind me of that on a regular basis.  And admittedly there seems to be a genetic predilection for alphabetized spices, properly folded towels, and overall control-freakishness.

And, quite truthfully, I am proud of this.  In fact, there are times I wish I had some more of my mother's traits.  She seems to be able to maintain a calmness and pleasantness in the face of adversity that I just don't have.

Me

Well, some adversity.  She's good in retail and office situations.  It might just be because every one is scared of her.  When she's at home, with a limited audience, she's not always so collected. Apparently as a youngster I came into the barn repeating my mother's admonitions to the calves she was attempting to teach to drink from a bucket.* Apparently she was convinced they were made of excrement and lacked intelligence. Yes, toddlers talking about the shitty dumb calves is rather cute.

Yet, here is my question. Likely 99.999999% of the troubles I had with my mother were based on me talking back.  Where did I learn this?  Clearly I must have had a good role model.  See, I'm thinking I learned it all from her.  So really, shouldn't she have been glad to have created a child willing to speak up for herself instead of constantly chastising her for that?  I suppose we'll never really know the answer.

Still, and all, I'm glad my mom is my mom.  I'm glad she's at least partly responsible for making me who I am today.  If only I could remember why.**

Fall 2010

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*It's a bit of a trick to teach a calf to drink from a bucket.  The general trick is to lead her mouth to the fluid by allowing her to suck your fingers.  The problem is that the calf believes that butting her head is a good way to get said fluid.  So, the calf butts her head and the teacher's fingers end up painfully trapped between the bottom of the bucket and the edges of the calf's teeth.

**One trait I do seem to have escaped is my mother's tendency to not remember things.