Once upon a time when I was thirteen

Thirteen was not a bad year for me. It was the year I had my first French kiss, on a canal boat somewhere in England. It was the year of my first provided-by-someone else orgasm. It was the year I flew to England on my own. It was the year I realized I was a bit of a loner, because being with all those relatives for 7 weeks? As much as I loved them I longed for my alone time. (The kiss, by the way, was not with a relative. That's my Irish cousins that do that. My English side- pretty freaking normal.) It was the the year I wrote dozens of terrible short stories and sappy poems. It was a year in which I failed French, but excelled in Language Arts, sucked at Math and did great in Social Studies.

It was also the year of The List:

1. I will never, ever yell at my children.
2. I will always listen to my children.
3. I will ask my children what they think.
4. I will never smack my children.
5. I will let my children have sleepovers every weekend.
6. I will not get mad at my kids if their rooms are messy.
7. I will play with my children.
8. I will not wait until I am old before I have children. Note: my mother was 24 when I was born. 24! So not old!
9. I will buy my children really great clothes.
10. I will not fight with my husband in front of my children.
11. I will never favour one child over the other.
12. I will give my kids a really good allowance.
13. But I won't make them clean.

Ah. To be 13 again, and to believe that I would be the perfect mother. Looking back, I know my mother was not just a good mother, she was a great mum. She struggled. She made mistakes. She yelled a lot (which is totally where I get it from, which she doesn't believe) but most of her yelling was actually at my dad, not at us. But because she was the yeller, and he was so quiet, I always took his side. I didn't realize he was so quiet because he was falling over drunk. My mother never let my brother and I know when it was financially difficult. I didn't have all the brand name clothes, but I wasn't among the worst dressed kids in the school.

I look back now and I wonder how she did it. How did she work full time and keep a clean house when I am at home and can barely manage to do the basics every day? How is it that there was always money for movies and field trips and take out every Friday when my father constantly quit jobs and would empty her chequing account buying drinks for him and his friends at the club? I never had any idea until I was an adult how much she put up with.

I didn't know until I was an adult that every time we went to England on holiday, she planned on not going back to Canada, but that my brother and I would start talking about missing our dad so we always came back. That, I think, was her biggest mistake, but I can totally see why she did it.

I have broken most every rule on this list that I made. I have smacked Taylor and Liam, I have yelled. God, have I yelled. I really need to work on that one, because Taylor is very snappy with Liam and Saoirse, and I can see her as a mother like myself one day. I get mad at her for yelling, but would she know better when it probably seems like that is all she hears? Of course not.

Some of these things are down right unreasonable. Sleepovers every weekend? I'd die. I don't even know why I had that on there, it seems to me a friend or my cousin were always over. I do recall asking her if a friend could sleep over and her saying no, because she didn't know what my dad would be like when he got home. Of course, I would have blamed her, not him. Really great clothes? Well, I know for a fact my kids have way more clothes than I did as a kid, because Taylor's closet is almost 3 times the size what mine was and it is jam packed. Are they are all really great clothes? Probably not, there's mostly Old Navy, some brand name clearance, but I'm not one to buy clothes from Zellers or Wal-Mart (okay I do like George, but mostly for the little ones.) Come to think of it, my mother wouldn't buy clothes from Zellers either and there was no Wal-Mart then, but even today she wouldn't go there. I so get my blue collar snobbiness from her. What I have discovered about kids and clothes is that you can buy them the nicest things and it's all up to them how they put it together. Once they pass a certain age you can't choose what they will wear to school. Case in point: Taylor, today. Brown t-shirt, with Old Navy on front in pink. Different shade of brown capris, Old Navy. White sweat socks, ankle length. Black slip on Esprit shoes. Yeah. So not pretty.

Crap this is long. I should have just written that I am going to look at the reasonable things on this list and re-evaluate how I treat my children. Because do I really want Taylor to one day blog (or whatever it is they'll be doing in the future) about what a terrible mother I was? Absolutely not.