My mom likes to say that everyone turns into their parents. This (to me) translates into, "It really annoys me that you're not my clone." I used to apologize for being myself and, well, different from her, but I now accept that I am just sometimes annoying to her.

If I had to break it down to one thing, our relationship suffers from a fundamentally different approach to the inherent pain and sadness of living. My mom belongs to the school of thought that pain, not only should, but, can be avoided with steely optimism and the triumphant resolve to "just be happy." Whenever I was sad growing up she would say, "Just don't feel that way." Rejection, alcoholism, and floundering self-esteem were no match for this simple recipe. In some ways it made sense, and sometimes it actually worked...for her. She could, like my volleyball coach used to say, "shake it off." Maybe it's because she's a Sagitarius and I'm a Pisces, or maybe because while she was able to divorce my father, I had no choice but to keep downing the Shirley Temples and browsing the juke box at every bar, or maybe I'm just different...

Still, sometimes it's nice to think that maybe it's that easy.

Just for today, I'll try to "just be happy."