Hundreds of Miles Apart

This woman. This is my mom. This is who parented me. This is who listened to me. This is who patiently sat with me while I cried (and I cried a lot as a child). This is who taught me.

No, you guys, she literally taught me. I'm convinced she could teach anyone to do anything. She taught me how to read and write (even calligraphy). She taught me how to sew and bake (I was a less than model student for these particular lessons). She taught me how to shop the clearance rack and hunt for bargains. She even taught me how to accept correction and constructive criticism. She's still teaching me to say words correctly.

She DIDN'T teach me how to back up a car and we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief that I learned this lesson without her.

My eye for detail comes from her. My affinity for creativity comes from her. Even the sound of my voice and most of my mannerisms — all her. She’s resourceful, witty, complex, and extremely thoughtful. I can look back and clearly see the fruit of her labor in my life. She invested a lot of love into me.

But what if I told you sometimes I forget about every true thing that's written above? What if I told you I've been carrying around some painful hurts and I let those hurts color my perception of our relationship? Last year things suddenly changed. Choices were made. Choices that hurt. Choices that left us hundreds of miles apart. Choices that felt very similar to the pain of my own divorce.

When my mom moved away it meant I lost the last family member who was able to help me with my kids. When she left so suddenly it made me feel abandoned. I was hurt. And when I'm hurt, I put up walls. Because my mom's thoughts were often on her new situation, there wasn't much to talk about other than, well, her new situation (or my disapproval of it).

I guess this is where I should divulge another quality we both share: we are both very obstinate.

Time, as well as dust, has a way of settling. Then you can see more objectively. Over time, it became easier to talk with her again, and the relationship started to feel more like it used to. During one of our phone conversations she mentioned how she would love for me to come visit her. I felt like it was time, too. It was time for me to participate in this new life she chose.

We made a plan, and last week I took off on a plane bound for the Northeast. Our time together was going well. It felt good to be reunited. I was grateful for more than just the invite. I was grateful because I know fun trips and memorable moments become rare treasures as we age. We both know it — our time together is finite. And that's where the hurt begins to wain. Offenses become less important than the time we have left, because our time together is limited. We aren't promised an endless number of years so we need to love each other well with the days we are given.

I'd love to say that this realization fixed everything. I'd love to say I now feel secure in my relationship with my mom. But that's not where the story ends. As we were talking and driving, she made a comment about how I handled a very delicate situation surrounding my previous marriage. Her perception of WHY I did what I did couldn't have been more wrong. It cut me deep. I got mad. I wanted to shut down. I always felt like my mom was one of the few people that really knew me, but this made me feel like she didn't know me at all. I just kept thinking, "I thought she knew me better than this!"

It took me a solid day of processing before I was able to let this go. These are the kinds of things we let make us bitter. The expectation we put on people to know and understand us is unfair. Remember all of those beautiful attributes I listed about my mother at the beginning of this story? THEY AREN'T ANY LESS TRUE NOW (even though my feelings tried to tell me otherwise).

I want to challenge you to think about the beautiful ways someone has shown you love. What path will you choose when hurt and offense sneak in and threaten to debunk your perception of this loved one? Because I promise you there's more than one path. My darling starling, the path of offense might be the most obvious in the heat of the moment, but it will certainly lead you away from the ones who you love.

Look at the history of their intentions. Remember how they've made you feel loved. Remember how they’ve SHOWN you love. I'm not implying that you should cling to the past, but the investment these people have made in your life should count! Look at the fruit their tree is producing — one rotten piece of fruit doesn't mean you cut down the whole tree.

So let’s stop cutting down the people who love us. In reality, none of us will ever perfectly love each other. Hurts happen. Offenses are inevitable. Tend to the issue and move past it.

This trip with my mom hit a rough patch. But staying stuck in that one hurtful moment wasn’t something I was willing to do. Moving past offense will free you. Relationships are messy. Don’t expect to love people and think you won’t have to deal with a rotten piece of fruit every once in a while. And remember: from time to time they’ll have to deal with a bad piece of fruit from your tree, too.