Mothers and their kids...

Okay, so I am sitting here bored. I have been dancing in my kitchen, the girls are on the deck playing with their friends, and all these little girls are doing the cha-cha slide with me. I wish I had a video camera, it is so cute. I am thinking of taking my stereo outside and just having a blast with the girls. They are all so funny. And so many of them just want the attention of a grown up woman. It makes me so sad. I know that so many of their mothers just do not spend time with them. I know this, because they are always over here at my house, wanting to do the whole "family" thing with us. We do a lot of "family" type things. We do not have a lot of money, but we, or I should say I, spend a lot of time just playing with the kids. We grill out, and let them invite who is ever around. We play music and dance and sing and laugh. When I was growing up, I did not get to do things like that. My mother never had time for me. She was always working, or spending her time with the man who EVENTUALLY became my step-father. You know, maybe that is where I get my propensity for falling for men I can not have. My mother played mistress to this man for over twelve years. He wanted to be there for his kids, and would not leave their mother until his youngest was eighteen. Granted, he spent most nights at our house, but he was always gone very early in the morning in order to be home before his children got up for school. Funny thing is, when I was growing up, I never knew. I just thought he went to work very early in the morning. I called him Daddy until I was nine. I sometimes wonder if he is my real father. See, when I miscarried my first child, the doctors ran some tests, and one of the things we discovered was that my blood type is not what it should be considering the parents I have. I am B-negative. My father is A-positive, my mother is A-positive. Those two just do not create a B-negative. The chances of the man I call my father actually being my father seem slim to none. That doesn't change the way i feel about any of my family, but it seems that all these years later, my mother might actually get around to telling me who my real father is. But she never will. She lives in her own reality, a world of her making. Where everything is exactly what she wants it to be, and all the bad shit that she has ever done to anyone just doesn't exist. If you were to ask her, she never beat my sister and I with a belt. She certainly never would occasionally grab the belt in such a way that we got hit with the buckle. And it is absolutely impossible that we ever bled as a result of being beaten with that belt buckle. Yet my sister and I remember it all very clearly. My mom also never read my sisters diary out loud to my grandparents, in an attempt to get them to understand why she separated my sister and I by sending my sister to Tennessee to live with my father, and refusing to send me as well. She also never told my grandparents that she had raised us alone for too long, and didn't want us anymore, the night she first sent my sister and I to live with our father, and then a little over a year later refused to let us return to him after we went to California for a visit with her. She never followed my sister out on her first date, and then beat her in the head with a shoe because my sister went to the drive in instead of a regular walk in theater. She never called me a whore, and dragged me crying to the car by my hair the night I went to the school play with my best friend, and the boy I had a crush on was standing outside with me inviting me to the cast party. She never made me move schools because I got caught wearing eyeliner when I was fifteen, and that is only something whores do. She never removed my bedroom door just to make sure I wasn't doing anything she couldn't see. She never listened in on my phone calls, or told my crush that I wasn't allowed to talk to boys when I was fifteen and he called just to see how I was. She certainly never screamed, yelled, and hit me in the face for not doing things the way she thought they ought to be done. She never made me spend my childhood keeping house, and beating me if dinner wasn't ready when she got home. She would have never hit me for vacuuming in the wrong direction, leaving vacuum marks pointing the wrong way. No, none of that ever happened. She would never have told me that she would not come to see her Grand-daughter before she passed away, because "I would rather wait until a happier time." No, that bitch would never have done that. She would never have said to me "What do you want?", as her first words to me, when I called her for the first time in six years to try and see if we could work past the shit, and at least be civil with each other. No that could not be something she did, she is perfect, just ask her. You know, I have been accused of being too lenient with my children. I would say that is true. I would also say that I have a great relationship with my kids. They know that there are times when Mommy will be a hard ass. They have been known to tell me occasionally that they hate me. They also know that no matter what happens, I will love them. That no matter what wrong they do, I will fight to the death defending them. That I will protect them against any and all comers. That I will listen when they need to talk. That I will hold them when they need to cry. That I will kiss away the hurts, and add my tears to theirs. They know that I will always be here for them. And so despite all the temper tantrums, on both sides, and the arguments, and the yelling, I think I have done my job as a parent, and I am okay with that. Now I need to go dance with my girls, and send an email to my son. That's all, Bye.