Have You Earned Your Mother’s Day?

This Mother’s Day I suggest you take a good long look at yourself to ascertain whether or not you really deserve that Hallmark card. Oh, sure, they say you’re a good mother, maybe even the best. What else can they say – you are their food source. But are you a really a good mother? Are you as good a mother as I am? I doubt it. Ask yourself these questions to find out.

• Do I teach my children the value of respectful communication ?
• Do I spend hours lovingly baking their favorite desserts?
• Do I steer impressionable minds toward appropriate media and role models?
• Do I protect the Earth for future generations?
• Do I explain the important things in life with wisdom and maturity?
• And perhaps most important, do I make a material contribution to the PTA?

If you can’t answer yes to most of all of these questions, what makes you think you deserve the card with the embossing and the ribbon? Much less the grocery story bouquet. Get over yourself, Mother.

An Inheritance From My Mother

When I visited my mother this year she reminded me for the zillionth time how important it was that when she died that I not overlook the gems that fill her house and comprise my inheritance. She knows me, knows I’d sooner level the place with dozer than pick through her life’s collection of multi-sized clothing, dishes too good to use, and books about decreasing clutter.

The material things I look forward to inheriting from my mother are few. There is the beautiful family ring that will be passed to my daughter, and – God willing – her own after that. I also look forward to keeping few of the vintage 1970s I-was-a-hot-rocker-mom keepsakes, specifically the wood and green leather platforms and the suede vest with the fur and bead accents. I will also possibly make some sort of memory quilt from the towels that have lived in my various of mother’s bathrooms for as long as I can remember and which I can only assume will continue to be there once she is not.

But life’s not about things. What will stay with me longer than any jewel or nostalgic terry cloth memento are the physical traits I’ve inherited from my mother. Certainly she will snicker from beyond every time I fill a cart with Poise pads, as I similarly teased when an ill timed sneeze sent her away for a change of clothes. And I don’t doubt it’ll happen, as evidenced by my husband’s frequent warnings to the children to ‘stop making Mommy laugh – she’ll pee”. And let’s not forget the single persistent chin hair (oh please, stay singular) and the thicker than necessary thigh zone. Why oh why I didn’t get those 2 extra vertical inches seems especially cruel in light of the aforementioned thigh situation.

Completely beyond the physical are those personality traits mom gave me. There’s the knack for smart ass remarks (often at wildly inappropriate times), the delusional belief that everyone should like me, and the significant disdain for authority.

Despite the passing down of all these material, physical, and emotional legacies, there is one inheritance I am most afraid of receiving. It is more terrifying than sorting my mother’s clutter and facing the lone, hearty chin hair. It is more fearsome than any absorbent feminine necessity and potentially as dangerous as the worst personality flaw.

It is the curse.

Perhaps your mother has issued the same to you:

“I hope when you grow up and have kids you have one just like yourself.”

Why a mother would inflict that kind of pain on her own daughter I will never understand. Unless of course, it comes true. In that case, perhaps I will utter those same words to my still-sweet little puddle of sunshine – right after I lock her in the closet.

This post was written in response to a brilliant prompt by the Parent Bloggers Network to promote Johnson’s Celebrity Hand Me Down Charity Auction.

New and Improved Mother’s Day

I just now finished addressing the Mother’s Day cards. If I’m lucky I’ll get them into the mailbox today. (Yeah, I know – who am I kidding?) So I can rest assured that they’ll arrive cross country approximately next Tuesday.

Mother’s Day: another opportunity for me to feel guilty. Even though I AM a mother. Aren’t I supposed to be celebrated? Trouble is I’m also a daughter, a daughter-in-law, a step-daughter, and the responsible party of children who have grandmothers.

It’s not just Mother’s Day. The other holidays aren’t any kinder to us moms.

• Halloween is cruel. After all that work to dress up the kids how are you repaid? With a big bowl of Fat Ass sitting on the counter for weeks.
• Birthdays give your kids free license repeatedly ask how old you are. Repeatedly. And when will your husband learn that when you say you want a ‘practical gift’, this is not code for ‘vacuum’. It means Botox. Duh.
• Let’s not forget Thanksgiving – the soul crushing, manicure wrecking, thigh widening hall of horrors.
• Christmas is actually quite wonderful – for people who like to start planning an event 18 months out. This year I didn’t send cards. I swear for a tiny minute the earth really did halt its rotation.
• Easter, please. Who looks good in white pants? Not moms.

What I really want is a holiday for me. Just for me. Lela Day, perhaps. Sounds nice right?

In the absence of that I would settle for National Mandatory Go To a Spa Day. This holiday is for women only. There are no cards and no gifts. The spa is free and you are required to stay there for a minimum of four hours. Make that five. And they have to feed you some magical food while you’re there that is delicious but non-fattening. In fact, it actually burns calories while you eat it without any effort on your part.

While you’re at the spa, the family is home celebrating their own holiday: Pick Up Your Own Crap and Clean Your Nasty Hairs Out of the Drain Day.

Who’s with me?

Pumps to Pampers: My First Year of Motherhood

Okay – not Pampers, because those were too expensive. More like pumps-to-off-brand-diapers-and-formula-bought-at-Costco-with-the-leftover-money-after-paying-the-scary-West-Coast-mortgage.

My first year of motherhood was crazy. Having thought I’d always work, I spent the first twelve weeks racing against the FMLA clock to get my late summer baby sleeping in his own crib and taking a bottle.

By October I was back at work, my easy bus commute replaced by an early morning ride with wails at stoplights, a very expensive parking space, and lunchtime nursing sessions frustrated by child care providers who cared more about my son’s selfish need to eat than my own desire to breastfeed – they always seemed to give him a bottle just before I arrived for our lunchtime nursing session.

On Thanksgiving we moved into a new home – the one with the yard and the quiet neighbors (and dry rot and leaking walls), but no handy coffee shop downstairs, no gym in walking distance, no doctor’s office and grocery store in strolling proximity. It didn’t matter because I wasn’t home much anyway. In addition to working full time, my position required me to travel. During my second trip out of town in a month, I decided in a Phoenix hotel room that I was done. I resigned a week later.

By the end of my son’s first year I had morphed from suit wearing spreadsheet maven to a freaked out first time stay home mom. We had no money, on account of losing that second income, so there was no shopping at Baby Gap or decorating the nursery. There was no nursery. (In fact, there was no kitchen for a while, but that’s another story.) However, my Excel skills came in handy when trying to figure out which bills to pay first.

So what did I do for fun with my baby?

Here’s the thing – when you just have one child, your first child, it’s really more like a pet or an extremely lifelike doll. You get to take the baby around with you collecting accolades. You get to go out to lunch with friends who marvel over your new toy. That’s fun. You still get to eat in restaurants with your husband because babies sleep a lot, and those carseats don’t take up much space. You hang out with your new baby-laden friends at the park. You go to the museum on free days and watch cheap matinees with a nursing baby on your lap. All this is fun.

Oh yeah, making him laugh. That’s the most fun of all. You do anything to get your baby to giggle. And I made up songs, because that’s how I roll – the stroller.

You even have time for occasional sex. This is fun, and yet, also problematic. Before you know it you are pregnant and while that’s pretty fun, soon you have another baby. That’s two kids – if you’re counting. You are now a full fledged adult and card carrying parent. That’s when the fun having gets a little more challenging. How about you? Rookie Moms everywhere are dying to know. These amazing women have put together a website to help new moms find fun things to do every day of the year. Oh how I wish I’d had their help during my first year. Check out Parent Bloggers Network today to read more stories.

ps – Happy Mother’s Day, y’all!