i ask you: are you like your mother?

it's 9:30 and finally a quiet moment. for once my father has gone to bed early after a long day of golfing in carrington (over 2 hours from fargo). my mom had the day off and we spent it going through her closet. she works at 5am tomorrow, so everyone is asleep. it's kind of weird living with my parents again after 9 years. there are ups and downs, and i intend to explore those issues sometime, but for now i wanted to write about an article i read on cnn.

Help, I'm turning in to my mother

Not the most revealing article I've ever read, but it did make me think, if only for a few moments (and we all know i'm not thinking much lately).

first, i'd like to say that i feel bad for anyone who wouldn't want to become his or her mom. i have a great realtionship with my mom, but i don't think we are very similar. i wouldn't mind being like my her (i think), but i don't think i am.

take today, for example. our task was to go through my mother's much-neglected walk-in closet - organize, sort, clean, throw out, etc. and herein lies the difference between my mom and i. i LOVE to do this sort of work. i can look at a space and a bunch of objects and fit them together quite easily. going through and tackling this sort of project stresses out my mother. as soon as we started to make a mess, she worried that it wouldn't get put back together. i never worried and understand the process. i don't know from where this sense of organization has come. i am, by far, more organized than anyone in my family. sure, i keep things, but everything has a home and is in its place.

but there are more differences. my mother likes salty, i like sweet. my style is more modern, hers contemporary. she enjoys the gym, which i despise. she's a nurse - ha ha ha. no way would i ever be able to do anything in medicine for a profession. she also helps people as part of her job. i gues i did, too. i helped them make money. :) maybe we're not so different, afterall...

we're both introverted. we have the same hands (and same as her mothers, in fact). we enjoy music and reading. we both do this thing where when we're alone (or around people with whom we are close), we'll scream and holler. probably only my father and brothers have ever seen that. i like me a fine drink and my mom has never been one to drink a lot. i'm probably a bit more agressive than her and she's definitely a nicer person than i. a friend of mine met her at an open house and said, "danielle, your mom is so NICE." and i was like, "yeah, aren't moms supposed to be?" and he replied, "but your mom is just a NICE person." apparently his is not.

anyway, its getting late and taking me a long time to finish this because i have been watching tv. i dont know if i'll ever come up with a decision of whether or not i'm like my mother and for the meantime, i pose the question to you, blog readers: are you like your mother? would you want to be? why wouldn't you? what traits of yourself would you like your children to have?