Motherhood

The Oxling is outgrowing his second car seat.  He turns eight months old this week.  This is going so quickly.  I just found out that my second term of nursing school is going to require full-time class attendance, Monday through Friday, which means full-time daycare.  The thought of sending him to daycare so young just feels... wrong.  Counter intuitive.  I'm asking myself, am I a nursing student first?  Because if I am then yes, he should go to daycare.  But I already know that I'm not a nursing student first.  So I have a decision to make.  What kind of mother will I be?

On the weekend my sister and I were talking about fights we had as kids.  She said, "one of the worst ones was on the bus ride from BC to Saskatchewan."
"What bus ride?" I asked.
She looked at me to see if I was joking.  I wasn't.  "Remember that one time when we decided we wanted to come home early and so she put us on the bus in Prince George?  We got into a huge fight and had to sit in different parts of the bus."
"We travelled alone from northern BC to Saskatchewan.  On a bus."
"Yes."
"How old were we?"
"You were about 13?  I was 12?"
"Huh.  I have absolutely no recollection of that."
"You probably blocked it."
She's right.  I think I did.

I remember the one year, possibly the same year, Mom picked us up in Saskatchewan (where Dad had custody) and drove us in her truck to her cabin in northern BC.  Five kids under the age of 13 stuffed into a small Toyota half-ton.  The only way it would work is if a couple of us at a time rode in the back under a fiberglass topper.  Through the mountains.  With no seat belts.

When we got to her cabin (no heat.  I associate my mom with very cold houses), she was exhausted and we were all tired and ornery and she started criticizing our dad for some reason and I freaked out in the irrational way that a teenager does, only unlike dad, mom reacted just as irrationally.  I remember as clear as anything her standing in the middle of the kitchen screaming at me, "you know nothing about feminism! Nothing!"  I believe she dropped a few f-bombs in there, too.

I think it broke something in my brain because I don't remember what happened after that.  But if my sister is right, it ended in a bus trip home.  I don't think I ever went back.

If only that whole scenario was the exception when it comes to my relationship with my mother.  Unfortunately, that's pretty much it in a nutshell.