Easily Excitable

My Momma will tell you outright that she doesn’t know where I come from. 

Up until about 6th or 7th grade, I was more introverted: I was bookish, shy, and scared of just about everything. 

However, the deeper into middle school I went, the louder I got. 

All the words and thoughts I had stored up  in my heart? 

They spilled out at an alarmingly fast rate. 

And all of a sudden, my introverted mother wasn’t sure what to do with me. 

I’m grateful that she excels in rolling with the punches.

When it comes to my personality, my loudness wasn’t something Momma gave me. Neither is my belief that anyone I don’t know in the room is just a friend I haven’t met yet. 

In fact, there are many parts of our personalities that don’t line up: 

I love the outdoors, while she could sit inside all day and be happy as can be. 

She says you follow a recipe to a T. I say that it’s okay to have creative differences with the writer of said-recipes. 

I love sports and being active: she would tell you she hates to sweat. 

She’s a spender: I’m a saver. 

The list goes on, and here’s what I can tell you: 

She’s still who I want to be when I grow up.

While I was thinking on my writing this week, I did want to document some of the things my mother passed along to me: the list is endless, but I tried to come up with a few of my favorite, outside-of-the-box options. 

These are some of my favorite things she’s given me: 

1. My style. 

No, literally: 75% of the clothes I have are hand-me-downs from my Momma. 

My mother is the best dresser I know, and lucky for me, she is also very generous. If you see me wearing anything cute, know it came from her closet. 

She cleaned out the house the other day and gave me enough dresses to last me ‘til Christmas time. 

Me, left to my own devices? 

I bought three pairs of fishing pants from Academy, and I rotate them throughout the week. 

Last week, I wore my favorite shirt: it’s from Goodwill, has a hole in the front of it (from me) and a blood stain on the sleeve (not from me). 

In fact, no one was more upset than Momma when, in my first year of teaching, she found out that  I was rotating my outfits every day of the week. 

Put plainly? 

I had my Monday outfit, Tuesday outfit, all the way through Friday. They never changed. 

I thought it worked out fine. 

This came crashing down when one of my first-year kids told me, “Hey, you’re wearing Thursday on Tuesday!” 

When I told Momma, she just about swallowed her tongue.

“Emmie, we have got to go shopping,” she told me. 

And that was the most I’ve ever spent on clothes, folks. But I’m still wearing some of those pieces today. 

2. All the school spirit

Oh, your mother doesn’t have an Oompa Loompa outfit on hand? How strange. 

Mine sure does, and while she did give me the outfit, she didn’t give me a proper once-over before I went to school wearing it. 

How’d I know this? 

Welp.

I was painted orange, wearing a green wig, and decked out in Oompa Loompa garb, and I was teaching my heart out when a student raised her hand. 

“Miss Meaduhs, I gotta tell you something.”

She proceeded to pass me a note that said, “I can see your drawers through your pants.”

I never pulled that outfit from the closet again. And I wore a sweatshirt around my waist for the rest of the day. 

Momma has the best costumes she made during her time as a teacher, and I am the lucky beneficiary of those. 

Pineapple? Check. 

1920s flapper? Check. 

Zombie prom? Hippie? Berenstein bear? Check, check, and check. 

There’s never an excuse not to dress up, according to Wendy Meadows. 

3. A love for color

My Momma will never be a beige Mom. She wasn’t when we were little, and she certainly isn’t now. 

She doesn’t wear any cream colors, and the walls in the big house are all a different color. There’s the red, the blues, the yellows, the greens. And there are prints galore. 

Because if there is anything that woman loves, it’s a color scheme and a matching pattern. 

As she does the inside, so she does the outside, too. 

Left up to our own devices, Daddy and I would have nothing but function in the way of tomatoes: Momma grows the prettiest zinnias: she adds the beauty to the place.

The house was always decked out in color when we were younger, too. There were Easter eggs tied on strings to a tree outside, a colorful Christmas tree, and fresh flowers more often than not. 

She passed that love for a colorful house, classroom, and wardrobe on to me. 

4. A teacher’s toolbox

When I started teaching in 2017, Momma got my classroom fixed up for me. She spray painted, laminated, and bulletin-board-decorated. 

I was the worst first year teacher than ever existed, but my classroom looked great- mainly because I wasn’t in charge of that aspect of it. 

But along with all of the decor, Momma also assembled and gave me a toolbox I still have and use today. 

A tape measure, hammer, electrical tape, nails, pins, and a whole host of other items assembled in a Rubbermaid carrying box. 

She didn’t mean it to have a lot of symbolism, but it meant the world to me then, and still does to this day. Even if Momma isn’t there to fix it for me, she gave me the tools to do it myself. 

Like I said, it probably didn’t have a huge metaphor attached to it from her perspective, but I’m grateful for that little box. 

5. Handwritten cards

If I’ve learned the power of words anywhere, it was through my Momma. For every ‘big event’- graduation, the first day of school, etc., she’s been faithful to write a little note. 

She wrote them in books on the first day of school as a child. 

She wrote one on a card before my Teacher of the Year interview.

She wrote one in the cookbook she gave me when Trey and I got married.  

She wrote pages when I was about to start my job as a teacher. 

You can think I might be somewhat skilled at writing, but my Momma puts me to shame. She’s funny and heartfelt, and that makes everything she writes priceless to me. 

When I was consolidating my trailer to get ready for Trey to move in (and officially make it our trailer), I was cleaning out the back room (sidenote- it’s not clean anymore).

I found the special box Momma made for me. It’s a host of things that only two people on this earth care about- Momma and me. 

In that box, there’s a Valentine’s Day card Momma wrote me when I was young- I would presume too young to read. 

On the front, there’s a clown she hand-drew (not a creepy one) and inside, there’s a note: 

“Dear Emmie, You make my heart happy!”

I kept it, and every time I look at it, my eyes might just leak a little bit. 

You never know just what your kids might keep. 

Happy Mother’s Day, both to my Momma and all the mothers out there. 

And Momma? You make my heart happy, too. 

Share, scroll down and follow, or scream it from the mountaintops: whatever you choose to do with what you just read, know that I appreciate your time!