Mother

“The problem with you, Jennifer, is that you’re afraid to fail and so you just don’t try.”  I can remember my mother saying that to me when I was still in grade school.  I thought she was the smartest woman in the world and quite possibly psychic.  I don’t know why I was always afraid of life as a child.  I was shy.  Not the normal shy.  The awkward shy… so shy that I didn’t speak much… at least to adults.  I never raised my hand in school, and I absolutely hated when it was my turn to read aloud in class. 

I’ve come a long way, and Lord knows I took the long road.  I don’t know why.  For whatever reason I felt that I had to learn lessons first hand, even though, my mother told me different.  “Pay attention and you can learn by observing other people instead of making costly mistakes.”  I was a hardheaded child.  I always tried to take the short cuts.  It wasn’t until my eighteenth birthday that I started to take life seriously, and that was because my mother showed me the door and reminded me that she’d fulfilled her obligation as a parent.  (That just made me chuckle.)  Tough love, she called it.  I learned quick, fast, and in a hurry that day.  I miss her so much, but I’m grateful that I still get to see her in my dreams.