Jokes On Me

My oldest daughter sleeps with about 30 stuffed animals. I’m not exaggerating. This is an accurate approximation give or take one or two. I was going to write 300 because I’m prone to exaggeration and hyperbole, but for this I want to paint an accurate picture. Thirty freaking stuffed animals in her tiny twin bed along with her. She who is long and lanky and likes to sleep spread out like a star fish. These stuffed animals make me nuts! Why you ask? Because they must be placed on her bed just so. And if they are not or if I have put them away when I made her bed, god help me. The wrath of Zeta will come down on me and it’s not pretty! She has certain animals lined up next to her pillow and of course there is a specific order they have to be in. Then there are several at the foot of her bed. Who knows why. To keep her feet warm? Others are wrapped up in her sheet, which she refuses to sleep under and this too drives me nuts. But that is all me. I mean, really what difference does it make if she doesn’t want to get under the flat sheet? Oh but it does make a difference! To me, because I’m nuts. It almost makes me shudder. Anyway, they are wrapped in her sheet and squished between her bed and the wall.

Zeta insists on getting all of these stuffed animals in their proper places before I can kiss her goodnight. And there I am losing patience, antsy to get the Hell outta Dodge and back to my wine and Real Housewives.  And then it hit me. As I’m telling her to get her butt in gear and get the show on the road, I have a sort of deja vu. Only I’m the kid in this past experience. That’s right. I used to  sleep with at least 30 stuffed animals and drove my mother mad while asking her to bring me one after the other while I placed them just so. She would exhale loudly and tell me to get on with it. She was anxious to get back to my dad, her martini and Dallas. My mom wasn’t a wine drinker. No, she liked martinis. Real martinis with gin and not watered down with olive juice. I’m not saying she was a lush, cause truly she wasn’t. But she knew how to drink and taught many others.  I’m taking a little literary license here. I never knew her to have a cocktail after dinner. And not every night did she have one before. Ordinarily I wouldn’t clear this  up, but the woman is no longer with us and can’t yell at me and clear up what might really tarnish her reputation.

So I guess it’s that payback all parents talk about their kids having one day. My mother used to wag her finger at me and say, “One day you’ll have a daughter just like you!” with an evil grin and a little glint in her eye. I thought she was nuts. I was a teenager, so I thought she was nuts regardless of what she was doing or saying. But, with this I really thought she was nuts. First of all, I was never going to have a daughter. I was going to have 3 boys. And let’s just say by some crazy happenstance, I did have a daughter? Who was just like me? How fantastic! What an excellent mother I’ll be to a daughter like me! Who better to understand her and relate to her? Ha! Last laughs on me. I had THREE daughters and nary a boy. And the first one is exactly like me. She is barely half way to reaching her teenage years and already I have to numb myself to her shenanigans with pills and booze. Well played, Mom. Well played.