Bad Mommy
Life is hard when you are a bad, bad mommy. I try as hard as the next girl, but there are times, particularly in the past few months and more specifically last Friday, where I lose all concept of the age of my children and what I can expect of them. At those moments, a certain ghost from my childhood reappears, and is unleashed on my sweet unsuspecting kids with the force and fury of a hurricane that has been spinning and gathering strength unnoticed in the warm waters off Florida for 20 years. When I feel it coming I try to hold it back, to protect the weak and small, but these days the levies sometimes break. I’ll never hurt my kids, but I am sure the angry specter of their once reliably fun-loving and understanding mother startles and upsets them.
I spent my childhood making no attempt to control my horrible Irish temper. I wasn’t particularly violent or even mouthy, since I was too much of a runt. However, I imagine I spent a lot of time with a scowl on my face because everything pissed me off, particularly every member of my family, every other kid at my school, every figure of authority, every soccer referee, and every lame boring homework assignment. (Anyone who had ever encountered my father in the act of being especially disappointed by the behavior of one his children or the Washington Redskins, would have had an immediate clue as to where my tendencies came from. If my father had been born in an earlier time, when language was just developing, thunderstorms would likely have been named after him.) However, I guess that much rage finally burns itself out and when I started high school I got tired of being so mad. I was finally free of the school where I had spent nine years with all the same kids, years when I was unable to change because my place in the landscape was so well entrenched. I decided to reinvent myself as a calm person, and after four years of high school, my classmates bestowed on me what once would have been the unlikeliest of titles: Most Laid Back. Now, I must give my title back or find a way to earn it back.
In my throes of guilt over an incident Friday evening, I came to the realization that all of the things that the kids did to upset me that night were entirely caused by me. My sister and I joke that someday I should write a parenting book since I have been known to say things like “Sometimes you have to make them cry” and “no books tonight, watch TV or go to bed.” Here is some additional advice I would put in that book:
Never tell your kid you are taking them anywhere. That way they can’t nag you to find out when you are going or cry when you decide that you are not going to Target because there is a monsoon outside.
If you are dumb enough to tell them your plans in advance, never take more than one kid out with you to Target in the pouring rain.
If you are dumb enough to take more than one kid, let’s say you take three kids, to Target in the pouring rain, don’t buy a big square basket with a lid that requires one whole arm and hand to carry.
If you are dumb enough to buy a big square basket, don’t buy so much other stuff that you need both hands and your six year old to carry it all. This means you must put your four year old in charge of walking your two year old across the Target parking lot in the pouring rain.
Never inform your children that TicTacs are available to the general public. Everyone will be much happier if they only exist in Grandmom’s handbag (much as Froot Loops only exist in Grandmom’s cabinet).
Never buy a car that has operable locks in the back seat. This may seem like a challenging requirement, but decommissioned police cars will likely fit the bill.
If you follow all of these rules, the following incident will never happen to you: Due to our urgent need for a manual pencil sharpener, the movie Because of Winn Dixie, and some sort of basket to contain the kids books in the living room, we headed out to Target in the pouring rain. The kids were reasonably behaved in the store, although the two year old (Marty) kept pitching things out of the cart, and the four year old (Lauren) kept insisting on pushing the cart, and the six year old (Aislinn) declared as we were headed out the door that she had to go to the bathroom and couldn’t possibly wait until we got home. Since, like a moron, I had bought a big square basket with a lid that required one arm and hand to carry, I was really counting on momentum to get us out the door and off to the car, but trying to be understanding I let the two girls scurry into the bathroom by themselves while I waited with all of my wares and Marty. Marty put on quite a show, banging on the gift registry computers repeatedly asking “How do you get PBS kids on this ‘puter?” and then running in larger and larger circles around the entranceway. When the girls finally reemerged and we tried to go outside, Marty had to try every door as I said, “that door doesn’t open, come here buddy, that door doesn’t work.” When I finally managed to herd him out with my knee, we stopped under the awning to put everyone’s hood up, I picked up the big basket and all of the bags, handed my purse to Aislinn and began to direct everyone through the rain, down the sidewalk, toward the car. At this point, Aislinn asked “Mom, can I have a tic tac?”
Is that the sort of question that should make a mother turn and with a measured ominous voice say “Do not ask me that question again.”? Obviously it should not be, but that is what came out of me. When we stepped into the street I directed the Lauren to take Marty by the hand and hold onto him until we got to the car. The car was close, but Marty, unfazed by the weather and the car heading right toward us, began to pull away from his sister for a little bit of splashing. I grabbed him by the back of the raincoat, not roughly (although anyone looking at my face in that moment might have thought I was going to throw him down into the puddle) and hurried him along, not noticing that the bags I had slung over my arm were banging his little back with every step. We reached the car and I loaded them all in and closed the door while I deposited all the purchases in the back. When I went to open the door and buckle the car seats, the door wouldn’t open because Lauren had locked it from the inside as a joke. If the face I’d made trudging through the rain was bad, I can only imagine how frightening the one staring through the locked door at little Lauren was. She immediately began to cry, telling me she was sorry, but instead of accepting the apology as I require all the kids to do, I said “I have told you already that that is not funny, and you can’t say your sorry and then keep doing it over and over again.” When the red finally began to fade from in front of my eyes and the crying began to reach a rather desperate pitch, I finally said, “That’s okay Lauren. Here, take these tic tacs and pass them out to every one.”
“How many can we have?”
“You can each have two.”
“How about three?”
“Okay you can each have three.”
“Can we each have four?”
“Mommy needs a drink.”
When I put the kids to bed, I had a quiet evening to reflect on my bad behavior, and decided that unless I wanted to be cast aside when Daddy gets home from Afghanistan, I’d better put in some time as the good mommy. So on Saturday, when the buddy boy finally went down for his nap and the girls were still finishing their after lunch treats and distractedly watching TV, I remembered that Lauren had asked if she could decorate a box as a house. Hoping for a hero moment, I quietly made my way over to the pile of boxes in the entryway (we keep a large pile of boxes on hand so that we always have the size we need for whatever we are sending to Afghanistan) and found two that seemed to be manageable in size and more or less house shaped. I began pulling the address labels and other stickers off, but the girls heard me and soon from the living room came the inevitable question “Mom, can we decorate some boxes to look like houses?” Seeking some redemption, I said “I’m way ahead of you girls, I’m getting the boxes ready now. Why don’t you go find the big bag of markers?”
“We want to paint the boxes.”
“Paint the boxes?”
“Yes, with paints and paintbrushes.”
“The only paints that we would have that would cover these boxes are those smelly ones. (tempera) Are you sure you want to use them?”
In a scene that would have made Walt Disney proud, the girls looked at one another, then at me and with huge grins on their faces, nodded yes. What could I do? I was the bad mommy, so I said “Okay” as cheerfully as I could and went to find some newspaper to spread on the ground. I got the paints down from their high closet shelf, made each girl a palette on a paper plate, found brushes, and got them each a big cup of water for rinsing their brushes. I watched them get started and admired their artistry for a few minutes and then inched away to the living room where my la-z-boy and huge book awaited me. I figured that we would all have a little quiet time and then we would be refreshed and ready to spend the rest of the day in harmony. I was seated and reading for about 3 minutes when the question barrage began.
“Mommy, want to see what I did?”
“Mommy, is this a good color for the chimney?”
“Mommy, when we finish painting these boxes can we paint another one to be a library?”
“Mommy, can I have some more yellow paint?”
“Mommy, if you are committed to an insane asylum, who will take care of us while Daddy is in Afghanistan?”
I spent my childhood making no attempt to control my horrible Irish temper. I wasn’t particularly violent or even mouthy, since I was too much of a runt. However, I imagine I spent a lot of time with a scowl on my face because everything pissed me off, particularly every member of my family, every other kid at my school, every figure of authority, every soccer referee, and every lame boring homework assignment. (Anyone who had ever encountered my father in the act of being especially disappointed by the behavior of one his children or the Washington Redskins, would have had an immediate clue as to where my tendencies came from. If my father had been born in an earlier time, when language was just developing, thunderstorms would likely have been named after him.) However, I guess that much rage finally burns itself out and when I started high school I got tired of being so mad. I was finally free of the school where I had spent nine years with all the same kids, years when I was unable to change because my place in the landscape was so well entrenched. I decided to reinvent myself as a calm person, and after four years of high school, my classmates bestowed on me what once would have been the unlikeliest of titles: Most Laid Back. Now, I must give my title back or find a way to earn it back.
In my throes of guilt over an incident Friday evening, I came to the realization that all of the things that the kids did to upset me that night were entirely caused by me. My sister and I joke that someday I should write a parenting book since I have been known to say things like “Sometimes you have to make them cry” and “no books tonight, watch TV or go to bed.” Here is some additional advice I would put in that book:
Never tell your kid you are taking them anywhere. That way they can’t nag you to find out when you are going or cry when you decide that you are not going to Target because there is a monsoon outside.
If you are dumb enough to tell them your plans in advance, never take more than one kid out with you to Target in the pouring rain.
If you are dumb enough to take more than one kid, let’s say you take three kids, to Target in the pouring rain, don’t buy a big square basket with a lid that requires one whole arm and hand to carry.
If you are dumb enough to buy a big square basket, don’t buy so much other stuff that you need both hands and your six year old to carry it all. This means you must put your four year old in charge of walking your two year old across the Target parking lot in the pouring rain.
Never inform your children that TicTacs are available to the general public. Everyone will be much happier if they only exist in Grandmom’s handbag (much as Froot Loops only exist in Grandmom’s cabinet).
Never buy a car that has operable locks in the back seat. This may seem like a challenging requirement, but decommissioned police cars will likely fit the bill.
If you follow all of these rules, the following incident will never happen to you: Due to our urgent need for a manual pencil sharpener, the movie Because of Winn Dixie, and some sort of basket to contain the kids books in the living room, we headed out to Target in the pouring rain. The kids were reasonably behaved in the store, although the two year old (Marty) kept pitching things out of the cart, and the four year old (Lauren) kept insisting on pushing the cart, and the six year old (Aislinn) declared as we were headed out the door that she had to go to the bathroom and couldn’t possibly wait until we got home. Since, like a moron, I had bought a big square basket with a lid that required one arm and hand to carry, I was really counting on momentum to get us out the door and off to the car, but trying to be understanding I let the two girls scurry into the bathroom by themselves while I waited with all of my wares and Marty. Marty put on quite a show, banging on the gift registry computers repeatedly asking “How do you get PBS kids on this ‘puter?” and then running in larger and larger circles around the entranceway. When the girls finally reemerged and we tried to go outside, Marty had to try every door as I said, “that door doesn’t open, come here buddy, that door doesn’t work.” When I finally managed to herd him out with my knee, we stopped under the awning to put everyone’s hood up, I picked up the big basket and all of the bags, handed my purse to Aislinn and began to direct everyone through the rain, down the sidewalk, toward the car. At this point, Aislinn asked “Mom, can I have a tic tac?”
Is that the sort of question that should make a mother turn and with a measured ominous voice say “Do not ask me that question again.”? Obviously it should not be, but that is what came out of me. When we stepped into the street I directed the Lauren to take Marty by the hand and hold onto him until we got to the car. The car was close, but Marty, unfazed by the weather and the car heading right toward us, began to pull away from his sister for a little bit of splashing. I grabbed him by the back of the raincoat, not roughly (although anyone looking at my face in that moment might have thought I was going to throw him down into the puddle) and hurried him along, not noticing that the bags I had slung over my arm were banging his little back with every step. We reached the car and I loaded them all in and closed the door while I deposited all the purchases in the back. When I went to open the door and buckle the car seats, the door wouldn’t open because Lauren had locked it from the inside as a joke. If the face I’d made trudging through the rain was bad, I can only imagine how frightening the one staring through the locked door at little Lauren was. She immediately began to cry, telling me she was sorry, but instead of accepting the apology as I require all the kids to do, I said “I have told you already that that is not funny, and you can’t say your sorry and then keep doing it over and over again.” When the red finally began to fade from in front of my eyes and the crying began to reach a rather desperate pitch, I finally said, “That’s okay Lauren. Here, take these tic tacs and pass them out to every one.”
“How many can we have?”
“You can each have two.”
“How about three?”
“Okay you can each have three.”
“Can we each have four?”
“Mommy needs a drink.”
When I put the kids to bed, I had a quiet evening to reflect on my bad behavior, and decided that unless I wanted to be cast aside when Daddy gets home from Afghanistan, I’d better put in some time as the good mommy. So on Saturday, when the buddy boy finally went down for his nap and the girls were still finishing their after lunch treats and distractedly watching TV, I remembered that Lauren had asked if she could decorate a box as a house. Hoping for a hero moment, I quietly made my way over to the pile of boxes in the entryway (we keep a large pile of boxes on hand so that we always have the size we need for whatever we are sending to Afghanistan) and found two that seemed to be manageable in size and more or less house shaped. I began pulling the address labels and other stickers off, but the girls heard me and soon from the living room came the inevitable question “Mom, can we decorate some boxes to look like houses?” Seeking some redemption, I said “I’m way ahead of you girls, I’m getting the boxes ready now. Why don’t you go find the big bag of markers?”
“We want to paint the boxes.”
“Paint the boxes?”
“Yes, with paints and paintbrushes.”
“The only paints that we would have that would cover these boxes are those smelly ones. (tempera) Are you sure you want to use them?”
In a scene that would have made Walt Disney proud, the girls looked at one another, then at me and with huge grins on their faces, nodded yes. What could I do? I was the bad mommy, so I said “Okay” as cheerfully as I could and went to find some newspaper to spread on the ground. I got the paints down from their high closet shelf, made each girl a palette on a paper plate, found brushes, and got them each a big cup of water for rinsing their brushes. I watched them get started and admired their artistry for a few minutes and then inched away to the living room where my la-z-boy and huge book awaited me. I figured that we would all have a little quiet time and then we would be refreshed and ready to spend the rest of the day in harmony. I was seated and reading for about 3 minutes when the question barrage began.
“Mommy, want to see what I did?”
“Mommy, is this a good color for the chimney?”
“Mommy, when we finish painting these boxes can we paint another one to be a library?”
“Mommy, can I have some more yellow paint?”
“Mommy, if you are committed to an insane asylum, who will take care of us while Daddy is in Afghanistan?”
posted by Shannon at 11:43 PM
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