In December, Good Housekeeping sent me an e-newsletter with the eye grabbing headline – “Ten signs you’re becoming your mom. (Sorry but it’s time to face the facts.)”

I’m not sure how I feel about that.

First, I think the title would have been more startling to the reader, more ‘smack you in the face’ if it had been “Ten Signs You Became Your Mother and Didn’t Know It (Sucker)”.

There are several reasons for this and Good Housekeeping does an excellent job of explaining this – with bluntness. Just rip the Band-Aid off the gaping wound. They tell me to simply “blame genetics”.

Perfect!

It’s not enough that my body gimps around like my mother’s, that I see telltale traits of her handwriting in mine or that my gray hair gets just as kinky as hers does, and thereby stands out more.

No.

Now I find myself strolling through Facebook, reading a post and thinking, “Oh, my mother would so do that.” And she would send me that same post in the next few minutes. Or when I shop for clothes for myself in an actual store nowadays (a rare moment indeed), that once I find something that fits and doesn’t make look like a whale, I discover I’m searching for that article in every color under Crayola’s spectrum. Something my mother taught me.

Good Housekeeping said in the article, one sign is you start making sure everyone’s coat is buttoned up, or your daughter’s hair is completely dry before leaving the house, you’re sounding more like mother every day. I have to stop GH right there. I remember my mother calling out to me and my siblings, draped on the sofa with her gin on the rocks calling out with half heartedly, “Take a coat.” Or “Don’t forget a hat.”

In fairness to my mom, those were called out to the last of the Siblings – seven of us in all and the span of eighteen years. As in life, she learned to let some worries go. She realized we weren’t going to die of pneumonia because we went outside with wet hair, stayed out after dark on Halloween trick-or-treating, or walking to school. After successfully seeing seven children live to adulthood, I’d be drinking gin or cocktail beverage of choice from the sofa also, just to marvel at any sanity I may have left.

As it is now, I drink with my grown son and his friends when they are in town, scold them for no coat or hat or gloves. I scroll their Facebook posts, send likes and Tweets all the while my hip reminds me that I walk … just like mother.

So cruel of you, Good Housekeeping!