guilt and unspoken expectations

My mind just can't accomplish the yoga twists that figuring out LOST would require. (It's OK Eve, I'm not going to give any spoilers!) Tonight's episode... damn. That's all I'm saying. Damn. Oh wait, I have one more thing to say about it: http://www.hansocareers.com

In more important news, my mother was in a car accident today. She wasn't hurt, but her car sure was. I can't figure out exactly how it could have happened though, it's crazy. She was riding down Dickerson Blvd on her way home, and a woman pulled out of a parking lot and t-boned her. I'm trying to figure out how the other driver didn't see Mom right in front of her as she gassed it and slammed into her. And the other driver, being an elderly woman, one of those frail weak looking types, started crying and had the police officers' sympathies. There's no doubt about whose fault it was, even the woman kept saying she didn't see Mom and slammed into her, but it got under Mom's skin that this other woman slammed into her, did major damage to her car (we don't know yet, but we suspect that there might be frame damage) and Ma loves this car, and basically, she stood beside her car while all the officers crowded around the other woman, being all sweet and sympathetic to her. I don't blame her, I'd have been pissed off too.

I know, all that matters is that Mom isn't hurt, but man is she pissed. And her car, wow. The front passenger door has a hole the size of a cantelope, all the way through the door. The only thing that seperates the outside from the inside is some fuzzy stuff, and the interior door liner. The back door isn't quite as bad, but it's bent, and out of whack, and we're not even going to try opening either one, because they're so off-kilter that I doubt they'd close again. The thing that has us worried about frame damage is that the woman hit her in that center support, on the passenger side, and the front fender/bumper area has been moved so that the pieces don't line up properly.

Of course, here starts the insurance beauracracy, so we'll see how it goes.

We made a sandbox for Terra today, a plastic pool with a patched hole, and ten 40lb bags of sand. She thinks she lives at the beach now. If only it were that simple eh? Not only is youth wasted on the young, but most of us don't even remember the best part of it, when anything you could imagine was truth, and everything was new.

I don't remember if I told you all about her reaction to the ocean when we were at the beach. Did I? She was breathless and so excited that she couldn't get the words out... It may very well be the most beautiful moment (other than my children's births) of my life, watching the pure joy and awe in her face. I remember the first time I showed her the moon. She was about 18 months old, and it was a full moon, and the sky was clear, and I bundled her up because it was chilly, and I took her out in the yard and showed it to her. Her reaction was the opposite of her reaction to the sea. She stayed very still and stared at it without saying a word, silenced by amazement, mesmerized. She's going to be like me where those things are concerned. That makes me smile, and makes me worry.
See, not only is youth wasted on the young, but maturing steals so many of those wonderful memories from us - remember when you never doubted the fact that Santa was coming? Remember trying to stay awake, running your tongue across the new hole in your gums, waiting to see the tooth fairy so you could thank her for your shiny new quarter? I don't. Then there's adulthood, which buries us in inhibitions and proper behavior and respectability.

I don't want my children to live like I have, working too hard to survive, always being proper and forever showing the faces that they know society expects. I want them to be the types that sing along with the music in the supermarket if they want to - the ones to run barefoot through summer rain, no matter who's looking. I want them to be happy when they're happy, and secure enough that if they're feeling heartbroken, they don't feel apologetic about it. I've lived my life by the rules of guilt and unspoken expectations. I want my children to break those rules.