Mother's Day is fast approaching, so in light of this holiday, I'd like to write a little bit about my very own mother, Rhonda.
I know that 99.99% of us would say that our moms are awesome, the best, amazing, incredible, etc. etc. Really, I hate to burst your bubble, but mine is better. No really, I mean that. Please allow me to elaborate here for a bit.
Rhonda, as I called her when I was a young child (because no one else called her mom, why should I?) is a helluva woman. She gave birth to me when she was 22. During my "coming into the world", she lost a lot of blood. Yep, I almost killed my mom being born. Little did she know, that would be nothing in comparison to what I would put her through in my teenage years. I was an only child for a few years, until her and my dad found out they were going to be parents yet again. Sadly, however, she miscarried that baby. Not long after, she was pregnant again with my brother, who was born a month early. This was a result of doing hard farm labor because my grandmother had been diagnosed with leukemia and could not help my grandpa. It probably wasn't the best idea for her to lift heavy buckets of coal ashes and things of that nature, but she did what she felt she had to do. She was lucky not to lose him also. While she was pregnant with my sister (a couple of years after the birth of my brother), she lost her mother (my grandmother) to leukemia and her mother-in-law (my other grandmother) to a massive heart attack. This pregnancy progressed fine and she gave birth to a healthy baby girl. A couple of years after that, she had my youngest brother...No more babies after that! So, as you can see, this woman was pregnant five times, had four children. The fact that she has managed to deal with us without killing or beating us to a bloody pulp deserves an award in itself. We were bratty kids, then again, what kids don't have their bratty moments? Or hours, days, weeks, months, years in some cases?
Much of the time, she had to take care of us 4 kids on her own, not because my dad was a deadbeat. He was an active member of the United States Air Force, and for anyone that has any kind of understanding of the military lifestyle, you know what this entails. There were times my dad had to go out of state or out of country because of duty calls. There were a couple of times that mom packed us up and headed back north to Ohio (from Louisiana) to live with grandpa. This helped her a lot, but I think that in itself also caused her a lot of stress. Who really enjoys moving anyways?
Now, as I stated before, the fact that I almost killed her during labor was nothing compared to what I would put her through as a teenager. Let me talk about that. It's as if the moment I turned 13, my brain and common sense decided to go on strike. I started getting interested in boys, and of course that was all that mattered. If I was having a fight with that boyfriend-at-the-time, I took it out on poor mom like it was her fault. Then my grades dropped, I was no longer that straight-A student my parents were so proud of. This led to me hanging out with other kids that didn't care too much about school. While I used to be interested in extra curricular classes and activities, I replaced with smoking cigarettes and sneaking beer out of my friends' parent's refrigerators. In high school, I just went from bad to worse. I started dating a guy that was bad news. Let me offer a word of advice here, if your best friend and your mom agree with one another and say to ditch a guy, it's probably a VERY good idea to listen. Did I? Nope. Did I regret it? Most certainly. This guy, over a period of a year to a year and a half, became very abusive. It was mostly verbal and emotional, but there were times it did get physical and sexual. I know my mom worried constantly if something bad was going to happen to me. Unfortunately, it did. I won't elaborate exactly what that was, but it was pretty horrible. I still deal with it daily, and I don't think it is ever something that will leave my mind. I know it weighs on hers also. No mother should ever have to go through that, especially a mother like mine. I started to come to my senses, at least a little when I was 15. I dumped the bad guy and started dating a new one (who would later become my husband and father of my children). Things were okay until about a year later, when I got into really big trouble at school. I was almost expelled over what happened, and had to go to therapy in order to return to school. While my dad was so mad at me that he didn't talk to me or acknowledge me for 5 months, my mom still tried to make life bearable for me. She let my boyfriend come over, talk on the phone, have some kind of social life even if it made my dad mad.
As if the crap I put my mom through wasn't enough she was also dealing with a lot of her own problems on her own plate. She and her brother (my uncle) took turns taking care of my aging grandpa, who had a stroke and could no longer live on his own or take care of himself. This worked out until my uncle's crazy wife decided he didn't need to do his share, and pretty much dumped it all on my mom (who also worked full time on top of taking care of 4 kids, one of them being me, a very unruly-know-it-all teenager). She and my uncle didn't talk for almost a year because of that. They ended up making up over that when he and his wife separated, but sadly, a few months later he passed away unexpectedly. This caused a lot of stress on her because he was never officially divorced, so the crazy wife tried to take everything that should've rightfully been my mom's and grandpa's. Because my mom was tired of the fight (and reasons why are coming) she gave it up just to be over it.
A few months after my uncle passed, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, which is a form of cancer. If not caught as early as it was, it very well could have killed her. Thankfully, she is "cured" of this cancer and has been since 1997. She was informed by both her doctors and my grandpa's that is would be wise not to tell him of her cancer in fear that it would cause him problems (with her being his only living child). She did as she was told, even though it is against what she felt was right. Sadly, my grandpa passed away Jan. 15, 1997. So before she was 40, she buried both her parents and her brothers (one brother actually passed away in infancy before she was born).
So as you can see, my mom is a tough cookie. Plus, keep in mind, she also raised my 3 younger siblings, and each of them gave her a fair share of grief also (it's not really my place to say who did what). Now she has yet another hurdle to jump over. Apparently at a recent doctor appointment they found something in her breast to cause a little bit of concern. Yesterday, she had a biopsy performed where they found 2 masses (originally thought to be only one). We are hoping that it is just scar tissue from her Hodgkin's, but we will find out next week for sure.
I will close this blurb in my blog by reiterating that my mom is the best there is. She has proven it time and time again, I certainly hope that she is still around for a long time for me to brag about.
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