What I wish someone had told me about mothering: notes from a Hip Young Mom.
Honestly, when I look around I wonder why in the world anyone let us take our babies home from the hospital. Couldn’t they see through our mask of hope, idealism and astonishing superiority? We would NEVER be “that mom”. The one hauling her screaming child through the supermarket or, (here comes the superiority) all organic farmer’s market. OUR child would never, NEVER drink the thinly veiled poison sucked from the dirty under regions of a cow. Not to mention anything made of, gasp, sugar! No NO, dear nurse, our babies will live all organic, low foot print, sustainable lives built around core values that include silence at the library and quinoa. We know. We know it all.
Then we get home and realize that the birthing classes were useless. We should have been taken on an African Safari to gain the skills needed to raise wild animals. I am the lone, hip female in a man clan of four boys and a husband. Each day, the three boys compete to see who will be the master of disaster. Everything is a weapon. Cereal is a weapon. If I didn’t have my husband to point the way I would have dropped them off at the zoo, considered myself a parental failure, and moved on to raising something easier, like werewolves or King Kong.
The fact of the matter: nothing showed me how little I knew about parenting more than real live kids of my own. Suddenly my mother took on sainted status (she had SIX) and if I had a grandmother alive I’m sure I would have showed up on her doorstep, sweating, in tears, gasping, “Hide me! Somewhere with decorating magazines!”
If you just became a mother, fear not. You have just entered a tribe of women who completely understand. When you are weeping in the bathroom stall of a fancy art gallery after your child has just broken a cement cube titled ‘thinking of death in Brooklyn” and priced more than your car, we don’t judge. We don’t ask WHY you brought your kid to an esoteric art exhibit. Mothers have a right to a life too, dammit! Even if it kills us! Which in many cases, has already happened, we were just too busy to realize. When you are up in the middle of the night, shushing a screaming baby and wiping upchuck out of your bra, don’t call your young, single friends. They will be casually sipping chilled wine around someone’s little patio with a view, trying to steer the conversation back to themselves. Call us. The Safari Guides of femininity. We’ll bring you a low brow beer and a listening ear. ‘Cause now, after three or four or fifteen kids, we really do know all there is to know about parenting, and let me tell you-it ain’t much. You’ll be fine.
