I admit to being dismayed when I remember the things that came out of my mouth when I was a young mother; the same threats and warnings my own mother had said to me decades earlier. I had sworn I would never say such things to my own kids, but the words came tumbling out anyway, uninvited.
"If I have to stop this car, you are really gonna get it!" My own mother had made that threat to me and my sister and brother a million times. She usually said that with one hand on the steering wheel and the other one swinging wildly over the backseat of our 1956 Ford Victoria. We all had to duck and dodge to avoid the "danger zone."
I don't remember my mother ever actually stopping the car, but she slammed on the brakes a few times to make us think she was going to.
"Don't make me come up there," while pointing my finger up the stairway. "If you do that one more time, you're gonna wish you hadn't." And also, "you'll put your eye out with that thing!"
Yes, we moms have inherited the words, and we know how to use them, giving us the ability to instantly go from sweetness and light to hormonal monster. Unfortunately, memory problems don't seem to erase those early moments I would like to forget, but maybe, just maybe my adult children now understand how a good mom can be connected straight from heaven to hell, and can change in a flash. It's a trait they may have inherited.