Something I Can't Tell My Mum

My mum is my hero, but I don't think I'll ever tell her.

Not for any tragic reason, she didn't die or abandon me. Or any other poetically awful thing that might have torn us apart.

I can't tell her because I don't know that she will believe me.

Even as I sit in front of her, as we talk, as we eat, I'll see her looking at me like I am not from her world. She will look at me like I am a well-meaning stranger, an interloper in her home. She looks at me and sees someone with a quick smile and hands made for writing. She thinks I am her opposite, her counterpart.

But we aren't that different. Not really.

We laugh at the same things, we cry at the same chapter in a book, and our smiles turn up in the same crooked way. What could make us so different?

When I was old enough to reach the top shelf in the pantry, and tell my siblings how to cook mac and cheese, people started telling me how much I sounded like her when I answered the phone. People would tell me I acted like her when I swept the floor and told them not to step in the dirt. When I walked around the kitchen leaving a half-finished mug of coffee behind, and when I stayed up until the very early hours tucked in a book, giving up on sleep that night.

I used to hate it. Being told I was like her; I wanted to be someone without expectation, without a predetermined personality, without decisions already made.

And now I see her and only think of the way she pushed us to reach for everything we could in our lives. How she gave up her job, and her life for us, how she never stops being herself, and how much energy she puts into everything she loves.

I hope I am looking in a mirror when I see her.

But I don't think she will believe me if I say this. Because she doesn't see a mirror when she looks at me. She sees something different.

Maybe it's because the way she sees herself is so unlike how I do. How everyone else must see her.

She tells me "you are always perfect, everyone seems to love you."

But she doesn't see that it's because I am like her. They don't love me, they love her.

By the way she reacts to compliments, to the admiration we express about her life, and herself; I don't think she believes herself to be anything special.

And just like any kid who has grown to see their parents as people, I know that's not true.

My mum has beyond superhuman strength. You have to, to have done two half Ironman Triathlons, two full Ironman Triathlons, a Boston Marathon (a few months after giving birth to her fourth child) and many other physical feats.

More than any of that, I admire her for her ability to be entirely herself.

I grew up where all the kids seemed to like the same things, where stepping outside the box didn't mean you could think for yourself; it meant you were outside the box.

I read books; so people thought I was smart. People assumed I was quiet because my personality didn't come out full force the moment an introduction was made.

I kind of became a version of that personality that people projected onto me. It was hard not to. Other people like to come up with ways to make you fit easier, to make you less complicated.

But my mum, she would make all the horribly lame jokes, act goofy, and kid-like at any dinner party they had. Act generally embarrassing and over-enthusiastic no matter where we were or who we were with.

Sometimes I acted like it was too much; because I knew that's how I should be acting. From shows I've seen and other kids who's parents emit just the right amount of energy. I acted like it was something bad to be different.

But I loved it. I love how she cares enough to use all her energy and be silly, goofy, and childish. I loved it back then even if I was too caught up about being in the box to show it.

Because I never really saw adults act that way. And it gives me so much relief, that I can still have fun and be childish when I grow up.

I don't have to give up being a kid, because my mum never did.

She is strong, she is smart, she is funny, and she has enough energy to care for all the people in her life without fail, and without question.

And she is self-deprecating enough to not see any of that.

She is my hero, and I wish she would be able to see why.