What Am I Doing? or The Commencement of the Gradual Transformation into My Mother

I blame the vacuum cleaner.

Ever since I got that thing, I have been obsessing even more than usual over specks on the rug.  I've also been wanting to wash everything.  Clothes, bedsheets, my husband's gym bag.  I want things to be clean and in its place.  I will not put the breakfast sandwich maker away until I am assured that every speck of stray food has been cleaned off, even if I have to dig between the grooves with a bread knife.

See, when my mom and dad moved into their new house, I made fun of my mother for being a maniac about keeping things completely unscathed.  If she discovered a scuff mark or if there were any moisture left behind on her counters...oh, Lord.  Even before then, she would start wanting to clean up at inopportune times, like, if we were about to go somewhere, she suddenly wanted to dust the side tables and water the plants.  Like, do you have to do that now?  Can't it wait?  But now, scarily, I realize that I understand.

The day I got that vacuum cleaner, I opened up the box, put it together like a G and the next day, I vacuumed the heck out of everything in sight.  I self-deprecatingly joked with husband about how obsessed I am with vacuuming and keeping everything spotless now, and he jokingly said, "Uh-oh, you're becoming like your mom," and it hit me like a ton of bricks.  Oh.  Snap.

Like, you see your parents as these idiosyncrasy-laden, yet lovable people and think you're worlds apart from them.  "Our lives are so different, Mom.  Don't compare things now to how they were when you first met Dad.  Gosh, by the time you were my age, you had three kids already."  Oh, Mom.  Eye roll.  But then you're faced with this feeling of inevitability, this worlds-apart-from-you momness slipping from between the cracks unbeknownst to you into your subconscious actions, inescapable, the momness ingrained in you, manifesting itself as a result of your Mrs-ness.  Before you can even ask yourself What am I doing?  you've already unthinkingly done it.

Today, I had to put our brand new comforter set on the bed, and I had to wash the old sheets (and therefore, I had to wash everything else that needed to be washed).  I had to do it today.  In the middle of fluffing out the new comforter and putting the new decorative shams on the pillows, I felt this mommy feeling.  I felt almost like I was watching myself go through these domestic motions with the same "maniacal" determination that I used to ridicule.  Like, someone was saying See? Now you see, don't you?  And all I could say in response was How else could I have known?