Thanks @jaynie! YOU... are awesome!

Reading about you and your mom always made me happy... I haven't had that much experience with positive and loving relationships between generations. I am certain my mom loved me, within the constraints she had created of How Life Is Supposed To Be.

I guess my mom was part of what's sometimes called "The Silent Generation" and they just did what they felt they had to, without fanfare or complaint. Born after one devastating world war, lived as kids in the 1930's depression, went through a second world war... it was all about rules and orderliness and things like free-spirited thinking and non-conformity was frowned upon.

It does take a lot of conscious awareness to break away from some of the less desirable attributes/values passed along... I had to figure out such things as affection on my own; how to think for myself rather than blindly follow dictated doctrines and so forth. But that's all a long story...