As children, we held onto our mother’s hands for support and guidance. As we got older, we held onto her words for encouragement and wisdom. Now, we may catch ourselves holding onto something we might not have expected – her habits. Whether it be her relentless strength, the little things she used to always tell us or the quirks we had once found annoying, many of us realize we have started to resemble our mothers in more ways than just our eye and hair color. Fight it, deny it, or try to ignore it. But, let’s face it: We are all truly our mother’s child.
1. Your order at Starbucks has become oddly specific.It crept up on you slowly. Your drink of choice started out as a vanilla bean Frappuccino before you came to college because that was before you valued the importance of caffeine. Then, you began adding a shot of espresso to your drinks as hours of studying grew longer. You then became slightly more health-conscious after your favorite pair of jeans from senior year of high school stopped fitting, so you nixed the whipped cream and substituted whole milk with nonfat milk. And now, as you tap your foot impatiently at the Hub, you find yourself giving the extensive order of a soy latte with two shots of espresso, no whip cream, no sweetener and extra ice. You now understand why your mother always gave those embarrassingly long and specific orders that made the baristas cringe.
2. You get concerned when friends skip meals.When you lived at home, your mother always made sure you had food to eat no matter what time of the day it was because apparently the world ends when you skip a meal. Once you came to college, your mother made a concerted effort to always ask “how are you eating?” in most conversations. But alas, all of her hard work of making sure you had food to eat has paid off.It’s Friday night and you’re getting ready for downtown with your roommate. You make sure she has eaten because you don’t want her to drink on an empty stomach. It’s Monday morning and you and your best friend have a two-hour block lecture in 30 minutes. You suggest going to get breakfast so neither of you experience the embarrassing noises our bodies make without fail in quiet rooms when we are hungry. It’s Sunday night after a 12-hour day of studying at Lib West but you don’t want to lose your table. You call Gumby’s and order way too much so you share with all of the other starving kids around you. Thanks mom for making sure we never went hungry.
3. Checking off things on your to-do lists actually seems fun.Whether she was a full-time working woman or a stay-at-home mom, our mothers were always able to conquer everything that needed to be done on her to-do list in a timely manner. As children we may have wondered how all of our lunches made and packed and laundry was done and folded before we even woke up. With thanks to a little notepad on our fridge or randomly scattered sticky notes, our mothers set the example for us that writing down tasks allows us to accomplish everything that must be done in a busy day.Although most of us college students are not waking up early to tend to the kids, we are waking up early to tend to the papers that need to printed for class, the dishes in the sink that need to be washed (because two weeks is too long…) and attending professor’s office hours that we’ve been putting off. Our mamas showed us a busy life can be made less chaotic if we are organized with the intentions of getting things done, and although clicking snooze feels so good, checking things off of our to-do lists feels strangely better.
4. You buy things simply because they are “Buy One, Get One Free.”As broke college students, we value the importance of food and more seriously, the importance of cheap food. After spending years in a household with an exorbitant amount of boxes of the same granola bars, Pop-Tarts and cereals (and if we had a really cool mom, mini muffins!), we now finally understand why our pantries were always filled with what seemed to be excess food.The frugal spending and money-wise minds of our moms now make sense, because our current wallets that seem to be collecting dust have led us to also appreciate the beautiful deal that is the BOGO. Yes, we may end up with more Chewy bars than we know what to do with, but our growling stomachs have little discretion late at night. We may also have picked up coupon clipping from our mothers, but we will keep that for another more embarrassing day.
5. You’re self-sufficient and independent.Too often do we forget the sacrifices our mothers have made for us to lead a happy life. We forget the selflessness she had to express to ensure we always had what we needed. Many times we lose perspective on how much our mother’s hero-like qualities really shaped us into some of the brilliant students that attend this university.It is no surprise that we find that we resemble our mothers, because after all, her qualities are part of the reason we are able to lead such fruitful lives. She did not crumble when things got hard; she simply found a new way to make it work.The reason we find ourselves able to live alone, shop alone, study alone and thrive alone is because for 18 years of our lives we were taught to never feel alone.
So maybe becoming our mother is not as terrifying as it once seemed at the naive age of 13 years old. Our moms were literally the only ones who have been there for us since the moment we entered this world, and it looks like they will be sticking around with us in more ways than one. Rejoice and feel grateful that we may turn out to be just as concerned, productive, bargain-scoping, selfless and overall bada** as the wonderful woman we call Mom.