When the Smoke Clears

Hmm… I’ve not been around much lately it seems…

The last few weeks have brought on multiple field-training exercises, prep work for the next stage of the game, all combined with the demands of the regular job, new employees, old battles, etc.

But I am thankful to my friends, some online who have become real-life friends, and the rest of my ever-loyal friends. I’ve said it before, but I am truly blessed with amazing people in my life. I’m thankful for my mother, a person who makes me, overachiever me, look like a slacker.

How many people have this kind of message from their mother? (alibi: I was in a meeting with the “boss” and couldn’t take her call. Normally she gets priority.)

“Hey, honey, I’m at the gym. I was on the treadmill and my iPod was sounding funny so it turns out I was bleeding out my ear and it won’t stop. Give me a call when you get a chance. I’ll be here for a bit.”

WHAT?

Bleeding out the ear?

She had my attention. It turned out to not actually be coming from her ear canal but rather some sort of cut on her ear. RSM breathed a sigh of relief.

Then there’s that extremely proud part of me. Mom doesn’t just go to some lame exercise room, she goes to a for-real gym and for-real works out. No wonder she looks about my age. AND she jams to her tunes on her iPod and is always asking for new music. Okay, so she’s on a Celtic jag right now, but for a long time she would just say, “hey, I need some new music. You know what I like.” So I get her listening to Poe, Anna Nalick, KT Tunstall, Christina Aguilera. “I can’t get my iPod to sync up. I’m at the computer, what do I do?” She can’t go back to a CD player anymore… oh no. iPod is the way to go. It’s only logical.

Just like her claims about a Corvette: it’s a practical car.

Follow me here: Mom lives on the ocean. She has a carport but not a garage. The ocean has salt-spray. Salt rusts out a standard car. A Corvette has a fiberglass body and is not subject to the effect of the ocean air. ERGO a Corvette is a practical decision for a car.

And it’s not like she tries to be the “cool mom,” she just is naturally cool. Somehow that resulted in me, the dork son, but still. I have friends who meet her once or twice and still ask about her, when she’s coming back, not polite conversation but in the interest of seeing her again and getting the chance to laugh with her. These friends are 15 years or more younger than I, far younger than her, but around her there is no age barrier. She just is who she is.

Mom never talked to me about how to be cool. I think she gave up on that. She never talked to me about seizing life, how to live, how to never stop learning, how to never give up, how to love your friends completely even if they are not capable of returning it to the same level because they will remember and most will stick with you, how to accept pain.

She has lived it. I follow her example, and struggle to keep up.

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