Wednesday, August 22, 2007

I'm Getting To Know You Between The Lines

When I was younger I would drive my mother crazy asking her questions about herself.

" Mami, when you where younger what did you want to do with your life?"
" Mami, was papi your only boyfriend?"
" Mami, what where you like as a kid?"

My mother would either ignore me until I got tired of waiting for her to answer and went off to bother my sisters or father or tell me to go do something and leave her alone.

This worked until my teen years when I would sit and wait for her to answer. She would usually dance around the questions or say something so crazy that I would forget what I had originally asked her.

As I got older, I stopped asking.

Recently without me asking mami has been sharing little things about herself.

It has been really great because some of the things she is telling me, are things that I have been wanting to know for years. I have always felt like my mothers life was a great big top secret mystery, and I use to joke around and tell people that my mom was really an assassin or something like that because I knew very little about her.

I finally feel like I know my mother. I am also shocked at how similar we really are but yet at the same time how different we are. When I was younger I use to doubt the fact that I was really her daughter because we were so different. So it is nice to know that we have somethings in common.

Through our sharing sessions I have found out a lot about my mother. Like how funny she is. Some of the things she says crack me up. She was also way cooler at my age then I will ever be, and something that I have known my whole life how incredibly strong she is. Along with a whole bunch of other great, cool, interesting only to me things.

I am so glad that we were able to do this. It has helped me to see my mami with new eyes.