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Authors: Jeanne Marie Laskas
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Dud!
Dud!
Shame on you! You’re a dud of a mother….
No, the no-sleep issue is not the meat of the problem, I don’t think. Exhaustion as it pertains to motherhood is more specifically related to the fact that it’s so damn constant. As mother, you are the sergeant of an army and most of the time your soldiers don’t do what you tell them to, and not only that but theyfight, pick at each other, a flick of a pea, a stolen potato chip, and then they want more juice, even though you said no more juice they want more juice, so you offer milk because their teeth are going to fall out from all that juice, and then they cry and the negotiations continue and you dig your heels in because
your job is to build character
, and the only way to build character is to set boundaries, and enforce them. Then one of them has to go potty, and the other one has you looking under the sofa for a lost teapot that goes with the little mouse tea party set you knew had too many parts, and so you put your hand under the couch and you find a half-eaten Pop-Tart, which enrages you far more than it should. And so you yell and they cry and you would cry, too, if you stopped to think about how the only hope you have for sanity is a Barney video. You put the Barney video in and they ask for more juice.
Anybody can survive a day of this, of course; anyone can survive a week. But the thing about child rearing is, those children who grow up so fast don’t really, not when you break it down hour-by-hour and minute-by-minute. They don’t stop being children, not even for a day, not even for a weekend, while they are busily growing up so fast, and sooner or later you ask yourself: How is it that I’ve turned into such a cranky foam-at-the-mouth bitch when I was always the fun one, the fun aunt, the lady who would visit my nieces and nephews and be welcomed like a reprieve from the monster my sister somehow turned into? “You’re funny! I wish
you
were my mom!” That’s what they said and so you always thought,
Wow, I’m going to be a great mom
. And now here you are an actual mom with your very own kids and they are finding someone else to say it to—“You’refunny! I
wish you
were my mom!”—maybe a babysitter, or one of your good friends from college; the thing of it is, you don’t even
care
. Whatever, so your kids think you’re a horrible grouch of a mom and they’d rather have a fun mom, uh-huh, whatever, can we just wrap this up and get on with the business of baths?
Maybe one of the reasons I even had the prison fantasy was because of the notion of already having been convicted. Whew. Done. Now let me get myself into my cell, and, by the way, is there any chance I could upgrade to a padded one?
And so. There we were sitting in our accountant’s office, and John Daller our accountant pointed to the poster of the time share in Aruba, a glorious photo of an azure blue sea with a little coconut-tree hut in the foreground. And that was that.
When we got to Aruba, I sat in one of those very same huts and I wore a big hat and I tried to read a book. That used to be a very enjoyable activity but now it was a war of conscience. The problem is, a lot can happen to a four-and-a-half-year-old child while you are sneaking your way into a chapter, and even more can happen to a two-and-a-half-year-old. Every little paragraph felt like a naughty treat and then I would imagine explaining to the ambulance driver that I just
had
to turn the page to find out if the wife really was cheating or not—it was coming up on the next page!—and that’s all I did, I just read that one tiny next paragraph and then when I looked up my kid was hanging from the jaws of that shark;
I swear I had no idea how she even got into the water in the first place!
It’s not worth it, all the places your imagination takes you when you are stealing your way out of motherhood and intobeing a normal person who just wants to read a damn book on the beach.
My friend Nancy
Dud!
Shame on you! You’re a dud of a mother….
No, the no-sleep issue is not the meat of the problem, I don’t think. Exhaustion as it pertains to motherhood is more specifically related to the fact that it’s so damn constant. As mother, you are the sergeant of an army and most of the time your soldiers don’t do what you tell them to, and not only that but theyfight, pick at each other, a flick of a pea, a stolen potato chip, and then they want more juice, even though you said no more juice they want more juice, so you offer milk because their teeth are going to fall out from all that juice, and then they cry and the negotiations continue and you dig your heels in because
your job is to build character
, and the only way to build character is to set boundaries, and enforce them. Then one of them has to go potty, and the other one has you looking under the sofa for a lost teapot that goes with the little mouse tea party set you knew had too many parts, and so you put your hand under the couch and you find a half-eaten Pop-Tart, which enrages you far more than it should. And so you yell and they cry and you would cry, too, if you stopped to think about how the only hope you have for sanity is a Barney video. You put the Barney video in and they ask for more juice.
Anybody can survive a day of this, of course; anyone can survive a week. But the thing about child rearing is, those children who grow up so fast don’t really, not when you break it down hour-by-hour and minute-by-minute. They don’t stop being children, not even for a day, not even for a weekend, while they are busily growing up so fast, and sooner or later you ask yourself: How is it that I’ve turned into such a cranky foam-at-the-mouth bitch when I was always the fun one, the fun aunt, the lady who would visit my nieces and nephews and be welcomed like a reprieve from the monster my sister somehow turned into? “You’re funny! I wish
you
were my mom!” That’s what they said and so you always thought,
Wow, I’m going to be a great mom
. And now here you are an actual mom with your very own kids and they are finding someone else to say it to—“You’refunny! I
wish you
were my mom!”—maybe a babysitter, or one of your good friends from college; the thing of it is, you don’t even
care
. Whatever, so your kids think you’re a horrible grouch of a mom and they’d rather have a fun mom, uh-huh, whatever, can we just wrap this up and get on with the business of baths?
Maybe one of the reasons I even had the prison fantasy was because of the notion of already having been convicted. Whew. Done. Now let me get myself into my cell, and, by the way, is there any chance I could upgrade to a padded one?
And so. There we were sitting in our accountant’s office, and John Daller our accountant pointed to the poster of the time share in Aruba, a glorious photo of an azure blue sea with a little coconut-tree hut in the foreground. And that was that.
When we got to Aruba, I sat in one of those very same huts and I wore a big hat and I tried to read a book. That used to be a very enjoyable activity but now it was a war of conscience. The problem is, a lot can happen to a four-and-a-half-year-old child while you are sneaking your way into a chapter, and even more can happen to a two-and-a-half-year-old. Every little paragraph felt like a naughty treat and then I would imagine explaining to the ambulance driver that I just
had
to turn the page to find out if the wife really was cheating or not—it was coming up on the next page!—and that’s all I did, I just read that one tiny next paragraph and then when I looked up my kid was hanging from the jaws of that shark;
I swear I had no idea how she even got into the water in the first place!
It’s not worth it, all the places your imagination takes you when you are stealing your way out of motherhood and intobeing a normal person who just wants to read a damn book on the beach.
My friend Nancy
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