Counting Blessings - My Mom and Dad

I am fortunate to have great parents who love me and never hurt me and who still do more for me than I will ever be able to thank them enough for. I was reminded today that not everyone has that and my heart breaks for her.

When we're little, we love them without question. They are our heroes. They can chase away bad dreams, slay the dragons in the closet, kill the spiders. They tell us not to stick our tongues on the wrought iron porch railing or the metal screen door when it's 30 below, and when we do anyway, they kiss away the boo-boos. They are Santa Clause, The Tooth Fairy, The Easter Bunny and The Great Pumpkin all rolled into one.

We get a little older and they might still be our heroes, but we start to get this feeling that they're not invincible super-heroes; that they're human and the do human things. Our boo-boos get bigger - broken hearts, broken limbs, broken promises. We do dumb things - like, backing the LTD through the garage door. (The door had windows at the time, the sun was going down and was level with said windows and when I checked the rear view, I swear the damn thing was open.) Dad wasn't happy.....wasn't happy to such a degree that he couldn't look at me. (And then over the years, both Mom and Dad have both taken a turn at backing through the door. WITHOUT the excuse of the sun blazing through the windows.)

A little older still and it seems we can't WAIT to get away from them, get out on our own where we have no rules, no curfews, no "stay away from my daughter" bullshit. (By the way dad, you absolutely knew what you were talking about.) And the boo-boos get even bigger. Sometimes, the boo-boos land us in the hospital for a week because sleeping pills and whiskey.....not a good combination.

And then we grow up, get married, have kids of our own and our parents get to say "I told you so!" because our children act just like we did and drive us just as crazy. And our spouses do dumb things and break promises and break our hearts.....sometimes even break our spirit.

But through it all, the one constant, the one thing that never changes and never goes away is their love and support. That love and support doesn't always look like or sound like what we want it to. My dad rarely says "I love you." But he comes and mows my lawn or brings the snow-blower and clears my sidewalks and my driveway. Love you too, Dad. And thanks.

My mother gets angry at the things that hurt me - my illness, my Former Supposed Spouse - and sometimes I get angry back because I think she's mad a me. But I know that she just wants the best for me. It hurts her to see me hurting and she gets frustrated when she can't "fix" me like she could when I was little.

So even though they drive me stark raving crazy sometimes, I honestly don't know what I would do without them. I don't know what I would do if my mother was like Maxine (my best friend's supposed mother) and was so wrapped up in her own miserable, minuscule, and unbelievably selfish little life that she couldn't be bothered to spend some time with her grandchild.

So, yeah. I'm counting Rex and Kris among the many blessings in my life.