Sayings of Susan

I actually used an old line of my mother's today, in exactly the situation she would have. I was preparing my kids for bedtime, and Viri was fussing. He said the standard "I'm not tired," and without pausing I said, "Well I'm tired of ya, so it's bedtime." I must have heard that a million times growing up, and I hadn't thought of it in years. It brought up fond memories, oddly. I guess the remembrance of being forced to go to bed is nice, even as the experience was, to my young mind, traumatic.

I do a lot of things differently than my mother did. I would never subject my kids to the bedtime song. (The complete transcript: "B-E-D-T-I-M-E, HA HA HA!" The pitch and speed increased as bedtime became closer.) The song is seared into my head as a death knell, but again I remember it with some fondness. The distance, and understanding of the joys of your children going to sleep after twelve hours of craziness, changes my perspective.

One of the things that is hardest about losing a parent young is the experiences that you have that allow you to relate to them are not able to be shared. Having two small kids, I get a lot of what mom was always saying. Even if I am quite different in many ways in my parenting style, and we are really different in our life experiences, I still come out with some of the things I heard as a boy from her.

Actually, maybe the bedtime song isn't such a bad idea. I really could get into the HA HA HA chorus.