Late at night is when I get most of my inspirational and ephipanal thoughts. Of course, late at night is when Momma needs to be sleeping 'cause working full-time outside of the home and then full-time with yon child inside the home wearies one to the max.

 

Anyway.

 

The other night I was thinking about how I've always looked at my family in terms of the whole generational thing, most specifically, the female part of it all: mother, grandmother, sister...you get the idea. I've always looked to before myself. But now that the "before" part is mostly gone...

 

Well, it's like cats and the heirarchy they have when there are more than one in a home. When one is gone, the others shift places as to who can sit where and how high and in what favorite chair or sunny spot. Now, that I have added a branch to the tree, there is a continuation of that heirarchy. A shifting of nomenclatures, roles, expectations. It's something that I've never really considered until the other night.

 

Now that Mom is gone, the family as it was, is no more. She was the Matriarch. Dad never was the Patriarch and never will be. [And sure as shit the new wife never will be anything other than "the new wife".] When Mom died, sure, I thought about my sister now being the Elder Female. But I never really looked too much past that. Now I'm starting to see that instead of Daughter, I'm also Wife (which doesn't necessarily come with a shift in position) but more importantly... I Am Momma. Not to imply that I've taken my mom's place. No, it's more subtle than that. It's a shift of focus.

 

But the scary part is that I don't feel like the way I imagine my mom feeling as a mom. And that's the crux of the shift: the perceptions we have of what our predecessors must have felt like. The parts we play, the roles we were cast in, in the age old Life Play, this Passion Play, of sorts... it's ever changing and evolving. But when I try to put on the costume of The Mother, it's un-nerving. To me, she was this giant figure who could do and Did do anything. My Grandmother was almost legendary to me. But me? How the hell am I suppossed to fill those shoes???

 

Having kids is NOT for the fainthearted. No sir.

 

As an interesting side note, my boss, Becky, just yesterday asked me if I was feeling a shift in the world as we know it. It took me a minute to realise that she was referring to her family dynamics. I asked her how long she'd been feeling this way (yes, in an almost mock Freudian way). She said, "since May." Which is when her mom had a stroke. She and her 4 siblings are all going through this same shift of focus.

 

I don't know where I'm going with this. Yes, family is family. But don't be fooled into thinking that it will always be the same, always be there.

 

That's all. Too much for early morning. Maybe this is why I tend to have my thoughts late at night.