I don't even know how to open this one up...this morning I'm listening to Quick Step and Side Kick while I'm doing the dishes, and I've played this album for a couple of weeks now while I do them, and my mother's heard the same song day in and day out "Judy Do" and today she asks what album that is. I told her it was the Thompson Twins and she says 'I never heard of them, how did you ever find out about them?'...

It never occurred to me to ask WHY when we were growing up she only listened to 60s Doo Wop music and easy rock and roll...I figured that was just her thing...well as it turns out late 60s through 70s music she largely hates becuase a lot of it is drug music and war songs and stuff...and when she married my father 26 years ago she basically let herself be shut off from the outside world. EVERY single night she never saw anything she wanted, she would just watch what he wanted to see, he doesn't like music so what she already knew was basically all she had. It wasn't until we came around and I got older and started repeating my sister's actions of listening to Michael Jackson that she started getting into the modern country scene too.

But when I was 11 and Napster was still legal and free, once I had the opportunity to find any music I wanted I did, I looked largely into the songs that always played on the New Wave CD commercials on TV so I got exposed to a lot of 80s music: Cyndi Lauper, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Queen, Twister Sister, Prince, Tears for Fears, the Thompson Twins, and I watched a lot of VH1 when they had a lot of 80s stuff and some 90s stuff...but for some reason my mother doesn't seem to realize I know about a lot of the stuff she let herself be shielded from during those years. Movies and music, anytime I find something 'new' from that era she wants to know HOW I found it.

You know, I just can't imagine having to live like that, allowing yourself to be subjected to a life like that, like you count for nothing, what you want doesn't matter, instead it's only what his royal highness wants that's important. And even today it's still largely like that. Thankfully she seems to have come with some terms that she counts for SOMETHING around here but still....it's amazing that for her being as far ahead of her time as she's always been, she wanted to go to college when every other girl was just getting married and becoming a mother, she went to art school, that in this regard she could still be sooooooo, I don't know, Victorian, mideval, something, this is not a modern way of thinking by ANY means. I simply can't understand it and hope I never do and my home environment has definitely been a large factor in my decision to never marry because this was her third try and the best she's done yet.

You try to make that person happy you convince yourself it is not much to give up to have peace in the home then 1 day you look in the mirror and the person you see is not you merely a shell you have to fight to get back to 1 self even if it means leaving this person who you have allowed to control you and your inner self i speak from personal knowledge check out some of my blogs on Shine foods Yahoo under Renae's Blog

In life, we all make choices. Sounds to me like she chose to be a wife and mother, and willingly redefined herself in said role.

Chris wrote:

In life, we all make choices. Sounds to me like she chose to be a wife and mother, and willingly redefined herself in said role.