Daydreams...

Yesterday while I was working, for once without any noise in the background, I began to day dream.

Now, day dreaming is a normal thing, even when there is noise I daydream and now that I'm getting married the wedding is a frequent subject. This time, however, it wasn't at all. Instead, I daydreamed about

My children.

Johnny and I have discussed when we intend to start trying for children and we've talked about what names we like (Ellen, Liam, Lanie...) so it was easy to daydream about our hypothetical son Liam and his hypothetical problems. As a woman I often fear that I will be the world's worst mother, that my kids will grow up to be jerks and selfish and snobby and any other bad thing I could think of so as I daydreamed I began to think of things I would do and the stories I would tell them to help them not become "that" guy/girl when they grow up.

I especially was thinking about my daughter, assuming I have one. I daydreamed that she had come home from school in tears because someone or other was mean to her or certain people didn't seem to like her, etc, we all know the drill. And I, as her understanding mother, sat down with her to let her know that what certain other people thought really didn't matter and went on to tell the story of my childhood.

I wanted to be friends with the popular crowd. I was painfully shy and hated standing out as different. In third grade I dressed up a day early for picture day and cried when I found out, and later that year I was so worried about being the only person to wear shorts to school that I actually called one of my friends every morning to find out if she was wearing shorts so I wouldn't be alone. I often felt people didn't like me for who I was so sometime around middle school I began choosing one close friend and then doing everything possible to be just like that girl because everyone seemed to like her so much more than they liked me. This, of course, didn't work, pushed that girl away, and I'd lose a friend. This happened over, and over, until I got to high school and I had zero close friends except for the one who didn't go to public school. As a result I absolutely despised high school, no less for the fact that due to all of my mimicry I had completely lost touch with who I was and was no longer an individual. It took me all four years of college to finally figure out who I was and when I did, an amazing thing happened:

People liked me.

So I tell this to my daughter, who is still in elementary school and easily moldable, and explain that she should just be herself regardless of what other people think, and that it's so not worth it to try to blend if she doesn't because who wants twenty of the same exact cookie-cutter people when she can be one in a pool of a thousand? And I daydream that due to this conversation she becomes exactly who she was meant to be, and that she allows her individuality to mold and shape her. Wow. Every mother's dream.

I hope I'm as good of a mother as I imagine I could be. All I have to go on is the example from my own mother and, let's be honest, she's pretty darn amazing. She did, in my completely unbiased opinion, a fabulous job with her own four daughters and I can only hope to do half as well as she did, and does. It is my goal to keep her around for as long as possible, regardless of her cancer, so that she can help me when that time comes. My children deserve to know their grandmother (who wants to be called Mimi. SO adorbs). I hope and pray and assume that they will.