As I stated earlier, my mother was never one to praise me for my good qualities. Well, even though I realized that I was doing the same thing as my daughter was growing up, I found it very hard to give her all of the praise that she deserved, and managed to do a lot of damage to her self esteem without knowing it. I always blamed my mother for my inabilities to do this.

Another point that she and I never could agree upon when I was young was religion. I won't really get too deep into this subject. But we had many disagreements about the subject and we eventually got to the point where we wouldn't even discuss it. She was one of the most devoted members of our church and was there every Sunday morning and night and every Wednesday night for prayer meeting. There were a few exceptions, but very few. She knew how I felt about the church and her beliefs and even though she knew that I felt just as strong about my beliefs as she did about hers, every now and then, she would try and prove to me where I was wrong. And there were also times that I would try and point out little things to her that contradicted what she said was fact. Then, along came Jim and Tammy Baker and PTL. I couldn't understand why she couldn't see just what these people were doing. There's actually no way of telling just how much money she actually sent these people, but I know that it was a great deal. That caused an even bigger wall between us.

At one point, when my daughter was about four years old, I had moved back from Florida and was trying to get my life back together. I had found a job and was trying to save up enough money to get back out on our own, but in the meantime, I had moved back home with my parents. This was during the PTL years. During this time, the show would come on TV at 6:00 every morning, and we all knew that there had to be silence while this show was on. This was a little difficult since this was also the time that I was trying to get ready for work, and get my daughter ready to go to the babysitters. I think the final bomb fell on Christmas Day that year.

My dad was worse than any kid on Christmas, he couldn't wait for everyone to get up and open presents. He'd always been that way, I remember some years, when I was younger, him coming past my bedroom door, sometimes as early as 5:00, and saying, just loud enough to wake me up, "I thought I heard someone come in a little bit ago, reckon it was Santa Claus?" Of course, out of bed I came. Well, he never changed and that year was no exception. Around 5:00 or 5:30, he got up and peeked in our door and told my daughter that Santa had been there. Well, unfortunatly, there was no stopping her then. I say unfortunatly because I had been up until 3:00, putting a doll house together, while he had gone to bed around 8:30 or 9:00.

Well, being a normal child at Christmas, she ran into the den and began tearing into her gifts. I'll never forget that Christmas, she got a new pair of skates, a new pair of tap shoes, her doll house, a new Barbie, and a nurses kit. Probably other things too, but those are the ones that stick out in my mind. Well, as she finished opening everything and was beginning to really check out her new windfall, the clock struck 6:00. My heart sank, I knew what that meant, and even though Christmas happened to fall on a weekday that year, I was silently hoping that Jim and Tammy Baker had decided to take the day off. No such luck, the TV was turned on and there was Tammy in all of her tons of makeup, singing a Christmas song. That's when I took on the hardest task I had ever taken on in my life; trying to get a four year old child to play as quietly as possible on Christmas morning! It didn't work. The day went downhill from there.

My mother was one of the hardest people in the world to buy a gift for. Even if she told us what she wanted, somehow, we always ended up getting the wrong color, size, model, etc., and she always made it known that we'd screwed up. Well, that year, we all managed to screw up, even though for once, she had been specific as to what she wanted, or at least we thought so. She had mentioned that she wanted a small Corning Ware dish like one that I had, the smallest one that they made. No problem, I found one, brought it home and wrapped it up. She had told us that she wanted a Kodak. No problem, my dad went out and bought the most expensive, one that was still simple enough for her to use without reading a book to learn how. He also, as he always did got her a box of candy. He had always bought her the biggest box of Millionaires they made, only this year, he couldn't find any, so he bought Turtles instead, which is basically the same thing, just made by a different company. My sister and her husband had even installed a dishwasher for her, since we weren't allowed to wash dishes of help clean up much, (we did it the wrong way), we all figured that now we could just load all the dirty dishes in the dishwasher for her and that would help her out a lot. Well, she was always the last one to open her presents, and when it got to her turn, we all sat back, proud, because we just knew that, for once, we had done everything right. Wrong!!!!!!!!!