IT TOOK ME 25 YEARS AND 11 MONTHS TO LEARN THIS!?!?!?

Life's lessons are so unexpected. As I contemplate this post I can hear my mothers words echoing in my head. They are reverberating around in there like a record with a scratch. Why is it so hard to obey? My mother, who is twice my age and more than triple my intellectual power and street smarts :) has told me certain things over and over so many times if I think about them I can hear her voice just like she is standing next to me instead of 2,533 miles away.

I believe mothers specialize in nagging. It is the only way things happen to our satisfaction and proper timing. I prefer to call it gently nudging. Kind of like when you are pregnant and you first feel your baby kicking. It starts out so little, just little whispers of a flutter against you. Then as the fetus grows those flutters become a little more noticeable and grow even still to be, well, rather unpleasant, particularly around your internal organs that are unaccustomed to being assaulted by feet. I regularly "nudge" members of my family, the way my mother nudged me, her mother did her and so on, throughout all of human existence, with the possible exception of the Garden of Eden. Eve doesn't seem like a gentle nudger, not until they got kicked out of there anyway, I like to think of her as more of a do-it-yourselfer...

For my wonderful children and husband the initial nudge is so gentle and sweet - they are my soft little flutterings and whisper sweet voice. Then it grows, depending on the importance of the issue it can grow exponentially and other flutters just turn into nudges and grow into taps - at times incessant tapping, not unlike the torture we inflicted as children involving sitting on someone and "tapping" their forehead until they can name 10 cereals.

I conclude these thoughts with one thing remaining unsaid which I dedicate to my dearest nudger, who nudged and tapped me through the first 25 years and 11 months of my existence.

Mother, I gargled hot salt water and dang it all, it worked.