An Above Average Mom Season One: Episode 1
I Don’t Use Maps
I don’t recall ever waiting until I fully knew enough before setting off at 100 miles an hour on an idea.
I don’t need coordinates. I need vibes.
Just tell me if the place I’m looking for is past the grocery store or over by that corner where everyone remembers a guy once got hit on a bicycle. Honestly, this shouldn’t be complicated. Do I pass a purple mailbox or not?
I would never be a threat to a pirate. I couldn’t steal buried treasure if I tried. In fact, my alibi is simple: I don’t even use maps.
It is helpful to be associated with people who can find water by reading wind charts—or, more realistically, someone who can remember the Netflix password without turning it into a fourteen-step recovery program. For the love of God, just do what it says.
And don’t even get me started on driving into a car wash.
Am I close? Am I on the track thing? Wait—is it pulling?
The greatest advantage I’ve ever had is realizing what was passed down to me wasn’t a plan.
It was relief.
The felt sense of what it’s like when something is true and safe in your body. What looks to other people like reckless dreaming is, for me, loyalty to that feeling. I know what staying true to myself feels like in my bones, and because of that, I fear no hell from opinions or feedback. I didn’t start with answers. I started with being held.
I Didn’t Know My Mom Well Enough to Understand What She Was Trying to Give Me
I’ve uncovered plenty of misinterpretations over the four decades I’ve spent “diagnosing” my mom in an attempt to understand her better.
The replaying of stories and advice gave me here-we-go-again vibes—not the call to attention I understand now: the origin story of emotional inheritance.
Her reflections arrived with gentle I-told-you-so energy, creating space to pause and room to reason. I appreciate life lessons that arrive as hugs, not the ones that come with FAFO, knock-on-the-door energy.
Spoiler alert: I do not have anything figured out. Despite all the “research,” I didn’t know what my mom was ever doing.
Here’s a page from the overstuffed file in my head.
I Was Raised by My Mom Without Knowing Her
She shared her life. I just couldn’t receive it.
The noise inside me was too loud to hear her words as information about her.
The four takeaways my mom gave me when I was younger were these:
- “Respect the ocean. It can change at any moment.”
- “Don’t talk to your daddy while driving through Birmingham.”
- “We don’t own Georgia Power.”
- “Stay true to who you are.”
She also had consistent opinions about music. During those rare moments when four kids weren’t fighting in the car, we were told to be quiet so my dad could listen to the radio—In the Living Years by Mike and the Mechanics. She said it was really powerful.
She cleaned to music moms listened to before having children. She owned records and 8-tracks she’d pull out to show us, and she had random knowledge about things like a song where a woman got a brand-new pair of roller skates and someone else had a key. I didn’t know why that would even be a thing. Turns out, Mom said they needed each other because the keys unlocked the skates.
It felt like she was explaining something as common and hip as an iPod to a kid who only knew a Discman. It felt tech-savvy. It still kind of does.
She also liked the message in Gangsta’s Paradise and talked about why it mattered to our generation. One of the most random memories I have is my mom singing along and talking about Busta Rhymes.
And somehow, all of that makes sense to me now.
…And back to the point.
One morning in my twenties, I accidentally learned something while eating breakfast and drinking a Dr. Pepper before work.
I was on the phone with my mom, and she casually mentioned that she used to love Dr. Pepper when she was younger.
That was the first time I remember hearing her say something about herself that I recognized in me.
Years later, in my late twenties and early thirties, I knew I wanted to make something clear to my own child to look back on.
Look for what was passed down.
Not in an “I told you so” way. Not as a passive guilt trip about not being noticed or appreciated. But as something intentionally saved for the moment when she, too, might realize that so many parental relationships—and so many misinterpretations—are made up in the chaos, when children bulldoze their feelings into other people’s lanes.
Hazel’s Mam
My mom asked me something once, and I said, “No, ma’am.”
Hazel lit up. “Ma’am! Ma’am!”
And just like that, my mother became Mam.
In the Pacific Northwest, saying yes or no, ma’am, isn’t as common as it is in the South. And honestly, that’s probably a good thing—because to Hazel, a “Ma’am” isn’t manners. It’s a person.
Hazel is adored by Mam in all the ways you’d hope a grandparent would adore a child. I’m grateful for the videos, the photos, the letters, and the memories that hold that relationship in place.
And the greatest clarification was realizing this:
I had the same mother Hazel has in her Mam.
I see it now.
I remember it now.