One of God’s greatest gifts is the lovely creature I like to call Mom. She spent nine months of her life getting huge and going through an ungodly amount of physical stress, only to spend ten hours trying to force a melon-sized head out of a place that melon-sized heads should NOT be. She’s not just my biggest fan/chef/chauffeur/maid/warden - she’s also my absolute best friend.
Therefore, I tell her everything.
She’s the first one to know when something amazing happens to me. She’s also the first one to know when bad stuff hits the fan and my life is going downhill fast. I could get in trouble, get an F, get a cold, or get a new brand of shampoo that smells like sunshine and meadows, and she would still be informed within hours via text message (or panicked phone call).
This may sound completely insane to those of you who don’t want your mother to know everything. I probably seem like some sort of goody-two-shoes, sheltered kid who lived with an 8 PM curfew and chaperoned dates. (Fun fact: I’m not.) Maybe you live with an unnecessary amount of fear after you do something wrong, or maybe you just don’t feel the need to share all the details of your life with the one person who’s known you throughout it.
You’re probably shaking your head disapprovingly, so let me explain why I do this.
She wants to know. She genuinely cares about me and loves me wholeheartedly, and she is interested in the daily details that I don’t find very exciting. Especially since I moved out, she doesn’t get to really “do life” with me anymore, and letting her know what’s going on makes her feel included, and like she’s still an active participant in my life.
She is the ultimate keeper of secrets. Even though she is a terrible gossip, the only people that will ever know are my aunts, my next-door neighbors, and my dad. Luckily, she’s not a meddler, so I know she’ll never directly get involved in my soap operas.
She usually is already aware that something is going on. In case you haven’t figured this out, mamas know when stuff is going down. They have some sort of sixth sense that can sniff out the junk we’ve been trying to hide. I still (lowkey) believe she has eyes in the back of her head.
She will follow up. Let’s face it, she’s curious and she wants to know the next chapter of the story. If I tell her about a job interview, she’ll get back to me days before the potential employer.
She understands me. Even if she doesn’t totally get what I’m going through, she knows me better than I know myself. She can analyze my situations from a partially unbiased standpoint. She encourages and reassures me that an emotional breakdown is how I usually react, and that there’s nothing I need to worry about.
She won’t hold back. If I’m being an idiot, she’ll tell me. If those jeans really do make me look fat, she’ll tell me. If I need to stop binge watching Gilmore Girls and start doing my homework, she will change the Netflix password. She can be kind and considerate, but, when needed, she can be straight savage.
She has wisdom from experience. Her opinion matters to me, because I know that she’s already gone through a lifetime of heartbreaks, cat fights, and emotional breakdowns. Her insight into the world of men and college and careers is priceless. Sometimes I wish she would just tell me straight up what to do, but I get that she wants me to live a life for myself. If I just did whatever she told me to, I would never learn.
She’ll always love me, no matter what. I could end up in any sort of sticky situation, and she would still pull me close, hug me tight, and tell me that everything is going to be alright.
So that’s why I tell her everything. Whether or not I actually follow her advice, I appreciate it. I know that all (maybe 99.9%) of what she says is out of love, not out of selfish motivation. She spent nineteen long years teaching me how to love others, how to laugh, how to be humble, how to behave, and how to be a smart, strong, sophisticated woman of God. I can honestly and without a doubt say that I owe every good quality that I have to my mother. She deserves to know everything.
