Amelia's Mom

As we sat in the lobby of the music center waiting for the junior high honors choir to begin, my mom and I made idle chitchat with the parents of one of Lyss’s friends, Amelia. The four of us made a concerted effort to ignore Olivia. I appreciated Amelia’s parents’ efforts. They were quite admirable.

But this isn’t actually about Olivia! I know. Who knew I could write anything that didn’t involve the little darling?

It’s actually about how refreshing it was to sit and talk to Amelia’s mom. This woman was so refreshingly unapologetic about how much she is OVER doing mom things these days.

She didn’t even pretend to feel bad about being thoroughly annoyed by all three of her kids for various things. It was awesome!

Her son is finishing his freshman year of college. She said he brings a ton of laundry home every single time he comes home, which, she declared, is WAY too often. Ha! She said that the night before the JH honors choir, he arrived at 8pm with his usual duffle bag of laundry. At first she informed him she was not doing his laundry that weekend but then, she said he started talking about stuff she just didn’t want to hear about so she escaped to their laundry room just so she didn’t have to hear his voice.

She didn’t have much to complain about her middle child, a daughter who is a junior in high school. This child, she said, at least cooks.

But she told me and my mom that her youngest, Amelia, who is Alyssa’s friend, is so wishy washy about every little thing and goes back and forth on all decisions. She said the latest obsession is whether or not she’s going to play sports in high school. Amelia’s mother informed her that she has until next fall to make any decision at all and she doesn’t want to hear another word about it until early August.

I wanna be just like this mom when I’m a grown up mom. I love that she’s letting her kids that her very existence doesn’t rely on them and their needs. She’s reminding them that she’s a person too and she doesn’t have to cater to their needs.

I could learn a thing or twenty from Amelia’s mom.

Though, to my credit, just this past Tuesday at Lyss's last JH track meet EVER I informed her, "If you're cold, I could give you my sweater but, yeah, I kind of don't want to. So I'm not going to. You can go get your sweatshirt out of the locker room." I'm getting there...