I am not a perfect mother. I freely admit this. My mom made it look easy; I however make it look like a herd of rabid, radioactive ferrets have taken over my circus and have eaten the ringmaster and all the other acts. So yeah, you could say I’m doing GREAT. Granted , the house is quieter more often now that they’re mostly grown, but when they’re all here, it’s back to the chaos and insanity. I created them, so I have no choice but to sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labors. (Heh. Literally.)
About the only thing I ever really shone bright in when they were little: I rocked Valentine boxes. I was mediocre on Halloween costumes (the bag lady complete with shopping cart was my moment in the sun), but dudes, I killed it at Valentine’s Day. It’s my least favorite “holiday” (it’s not a real holiday, by the way - it’s commercialism at its pinkest and glitteriest and syrupy sweet awful-est), but something triggered me come February 1st and I became one of those moms, determined to outdo everyone else on the planet. Fortunately, by the time we started attending homeschool co-op, my kids had outgrown Valentine boxes. Homeschool moms are apparently ALL. ABOUT. VALENTINE. BOXES. I felt like shoebox-with-stickers-on-it-mom at homeschool co-op – and there is nothing wrong with shoeboxes and stickers mom, but my TV with real cord and hand-painted color bars paled in comparison to the to-scale ice castle that looked like it came straight from a frozen Norwegian village a la Disney.
But back to me being less-than-perfect: I dropped Kady three times when she was an infant. I told Abby to suck it up and finish her gymnastics class after she stubbed her toe on a chair. Turns out the toe was broken. And the list goes on of all the things I’ve done to thoroughly mess up my kids. I Mom pretty hard, but not perfectly.
Awhile back I found some cute string lights for the porch, which I asked Paul to put up repeatedly, to no avail. So Monday, since Kady and I had just cleaned and decorated the porch with mums, we decided to hang the lights ourselves. Until we realized we needed the big stapler. Which was somewhere in the disaster of Paul’s shop. After a few phone calls to him during which he directed us repeatedly to “one of those DeWalt tool bags over by the fridge,” we gave up due to anaphylaxis setting in. Oh, not from anything we’re allergic to, but the mess was just giving us hives. I grabbed some hamburger from the freezer for dinner and we decided to just wait until he got home
As we got back to the porch where we planned to just sit and relax, I heard Kady shriek, “OH GOSH NO MOM NO!!!!!” I turned to see her, arms in the air, spider crawling on her shirt. She was frozen in fear and apparently, as the adult who was present, she looked to me to remove it before it ate her spleen or something. I love her and all, but no way was I touching a spider with my bare hands. I briefly considered kicking it off her, then remembered I am old and fat and not at all flexible.
So I did the only thing I knew to do: I whacked my child with a pound of frozen ground beef. Right in the ribs. She made a little “oof” sound as the tube of frozen meat made contact, but I was now committed to spider annihilation. And….of course, I missed the spider. I whacked her again. Success! She should’ve embraced me in a thankful hug, but instead she just stood there a few seconds before she finally said, quietly, but fiercely, “Mom? Did you just hit me with HAMBURGER???” before she just turned and walked in the house.
I’m telling you, few women achieve this level of Maternal Greatness.
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