It was quite amusing to see my parents and relatives with their big hair, in their 80's outfits (which is totally in now, by the way.) My dad looked like he was too cool for school (Ha, OK dad..). I saw my cousin Danny, who was a little kid, and now he's 30 and getting married next month. Crazy. What really struck me--the main reason I even thought of writing this entry--was my mom. Growing up, I've always believed that I was the complete opposite of my mom. She had health issues as a child; I was a perfectly healthy child. She did not participate in sports; I absolutely love playing/watching sports. She's very girly; I'm not as much. Anyway, you get the point. When I was a kid, I was extremely close to my mom. I thought my dad was a meanie. My mom and I went shopping after school, and I always deemed her my "favorite" parent. Then somewhere along the way, we grew apart, because I (was a teenager) and began being very critical of her. Why aren't you like the other moms? Why do you always do this/that? Ugh, you don't understand me at all! Like seriously, why can't she be like that Gilmore mom? Or at least someone who's nice and bakes warm apple pies. Anyway, then high school came, along with her reminding (bugging) me about studying, piano, etc etc, which made me resent her even more. As a child I adored her, but as an adolescent, I questioned and critized her. How could she say something like that? How could she think something like that? I even went as far as to tell her that, had we been classmates in another world/lifetime, I wouldn't be her friend. (I meant to say it in a mean way, but I realized I just end up sounding really immature). I found that as I got older, I often told myself--I don't want to be like her when I grow up. This is what I'm going to do differently, as a mom/wife/whatever. This is how I'm going to be different.
So this brings us to the climax of the story. I was absolutely stunned when I saw her in the video because something was oddly familiar. I realized right away that it was familiar because I saw myself in her mannerisms. I couldn't believe it. Her voice even sounded like mine, which was crazy, because her voice now doesn't sound anything like mine now. My mom, who I've always thought as a complete opposite person from me, was on that tv screen, at age 28, acting and sounding like me. I'm like my mom? Go figure.
I'm not so different...I'm not so special. I think maybe every generation thinks they are something really great, they scoff at the old-timers, laughing at how out-of-date they are, how uncool they were. But we forget...we're just one season, one batch, just like all the other ones that have come before us. We may be different, but we ain't that different. I was born and raised here; my parents weren't. We have a culture gap, age gap, heck--even language gap. Yet, perhaps I am not so different from them. After all, I am part my mom, part my dad. I can't escape that. We've learned in our classes that we study history because it's the story of our past, and our past is often what dictates our future.
I mentioned in my first or second entry that writing for me, as it is for many, is kind of a journey. It's a process of self-discovery and finding out your own identity, which is something that I believe keeps evolving. Watching my parent's wedding video was funny, but it struck another chord as well: how it relates to me. It also reminds me not to be so critical of my parents. They've aged so much since the time of their wedding, they've battled through so much since then, and life just goes by way too fast. Someday, that'll be me on the DVD (if those haven't gone obsolete by then), and it'll be my kids seeing a little bit of me in them.
"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?" -Cicero.
