Chicken Soup for Every Mom's Soul (12 page)

There are days when I want you to reach great heights and conquer the world. Cure a disease, my son, I whisper to myself; write an immortal book; cross some new frontier for humankind.
Ah, but you are being pushy and selfish,
says a little voice within me.

And then there are days when I merely want you to be wealthy and successful. I want you to live in mansions, drive luxury cars and have exotic vacations.
But that won’t
mean he’ll be happy,
says that chiding voice again.

So when I sit down and think in earnest, I realize my dreams for you have little to do with fame or money or worldly success. As I write down my thoughts, prayers and wishes for you, I am in danger of getting as mushy as the last of the cereal in the bowl that you say “ugh” to. But I will go ahead anyway.

May you always have the joy in living, the sheer enjoyment in things humble and inconsequential, that you— like most small children—have now. As we grow older our shoulders sag, our eyes glaze over and we busy ourselves in things mundane and wretched. May your spirit never get jaded so that the beauty around you escapes you, that the ability to wonder, to marvel leaves you.

I wish for you the greatest gifts any person can have: good health and the love of family and friends. May the scourge of loneliness never be upon you. Find a good wife, set up house and family, and find solace there from the world and its troubles.

We live in a time beset by the winds of change: some of it exciting, some of it strange and bewildering. In this fast, ever-changing, sometimes surreal world of technology, I hope you find within yourself a sense of balance, a sense of who you are separate from the machines around you.

We like to think that the happy man is one who has everything. But maybe, my son, the truly happy person is someone who is liberated from that feeling of “want, want, want,” which gnaws at one’s soul. I know this is a tall order, but I hope you won’t end up basing your happiness upon owning every gizmo and bauble on the market.

I am confident that you will find your place in this world. As you grow older, I hope that you will discover that there are things more precious than riches: to be able to laugh with a carefree heart, to sleep with an untroubled conscience, to have the thrill of achievement coursing through your veins. Hold onto these things greedily; never let them go. May you always stand tall and true and triumphant. No one else needs to know; no one else needs to applaud.

Most of all, may your world always be the iridescent bubble it is for you now.

You came into this world, and I thought I could mold you, shape you, teach you. Little did I know that I would be taught some important lessons about life as well. You jump out of bed every morning, my angel, and the day seems to stretch out before you with magical possibilities. You have no time to ponder over yesterday’s tearful tantrum, or fret about tomorrow’s dental appointment. Isn’t there a lesson in this for me, I wonder, to celebrate the here-and-now, instead of constantly looking over my shoulder at yesterday’s follies, or craning my neck toward tomorrow’s troubles?

I have knelt down beside you and tried to look out at the world through your shiny, ever-curious eyes. And I have learned that life is not a nonstop treadmill to be crammed with productive activities every minute of the day, but a colorful carousel to be savored and enjoyed with all the senses. Sometimes the laundry, the to-do list, the e-mail can wait. I’ve realized it is all right to waste a little time, to lie on your back on the grass on a spring day and look up at the white cotton-candy clouds wafting in the blue sky. It’s all right to lie on your stomach side by side with your child and look down an air vent in your kitchen and imagine the weird monsters lurking down below.

You are and will always be my most precious treasure, my biggest achievement and my proudest legacy.

Saritha Prabhu

And What Do You Do?

B
eing a full-time mother is one of the highest
salaried jobs . . . since the payment is pure love.

Mildred B. Vermont

To me,
housewife
is as appealing a title as
septic-tank
cleaner.
Mention either at a cocktail party, and suddenly no one wants to stand near you.
Housewife
might satisfy the IRS because it explains in one word your negative cash flow. But it doesn’t describe what I do every day, seven days a week with no sick days, holidays and at times no bathroom breaks.

In previous years, my accountant had listed my occupation on my tax return as
writer.
But between last year’s preterm labor (five weeks on the couch) and colic (four months wishing I could put my wailing baby down and sit on the couch), I barely had the time and energy to write a grocery list, let alone something salable. So, I gave up writing to stay home and care for my two young sons. I didn’t choose the title for the job.

I could call myself a domestic engineer, like my sister-in-law did. But if I knew anything about engineering, I’d be able to open and close the playpen without stifling more four-letter words than you hear in an episode of “The Sopranos.”

Domestic engineer
is far too supercilious a title. Mention it at your husband’s office holiday party, and people might ask where you got your degree. After a few eggnogs, you might reply, Episiotomy U. or Postpartum State. The next day at your “office,” your responses won’t seem as clever—except to your mother, who holds master’s degrees from those institutions.

Stay-at-home mom
sounds benign enough until you’ve spent three straight rainy days trapped inside with a two-year-old who thinks Nancy Reagan coined “Just Say No” for him, and a one-year-old who chews on shoes—including the pair you’re wearing. Then you’d realize that
stay-at-home
mom
is an oxymoron.

A stay-at-home mom stays home only when Dad drags the kids to the Home Depot (thank God) or when the governor declares a state of emergency. Otherwise, she’s at a Moms-and-Tots meeting, the supermarket or the mall, dropping quarter after quarter into the Batmobile ride.

Full-time mom
is another misnomer, because it implies that working mothers are part-time mothers, and that’s just not true. Anyone whose Day-Timer reads “Marketing report due,” “Pediatrician appointment” and “Make eighteen cupcakes for preschool party” on the same page is not only working full-time at motherhood, she’s working overtime.

Besides, “full-time” doesn’t even begin to cover how much time I spend at my job. Most full-time workers put in forty to fifty hours a week. I put that in by Wednesday. In my job, I’m on call around the clock. Add family vacations, where I bring my work with me on a very, very long car ride, and full-time becomes all-the-time.

Homemaker
is a quaint title, but inappropriate. I haven’t made any homes, though I’ve seen enough construction videos (thanks to my sons) that I probably could build a decent cabin—or at least a nice shed where I could hide. But really, I’m not making a house so much as I’m trying to keep my toddlers from tearing ours down.

In some ways,
homemaker
sounds worse than
housewife.
To me, a homemaker does all the same things as a housewife, but with a warm smile and a meatloaf she whipped up between craft projects and Christmas carols. She certainly doesn’t have a toddler throwing a tantrum on the kitchen floor because she won’t let him have animal crackers for dinner. A homemaker? By five o’clock, I’m too exhausted to make dinner, let alone a home.

I wish I could think of a better title for the toughest job I’ve ever had. But no matter what I come up with, my accountant will likely just put
housewife
on my tax returns anyway. And the Social Security Administration will keep sending me reports with zeros on it. Perhaps that’s just how society values what I do.

But the next time someone asks, “And what do you do?” I’ll just say that I do what my mother did, and her mother did. I’ll say it’s such a hard job, my husband wouldn’t want to do it, and my father wouldn’t know how. I’ll say my kids are very proud of what I do. And they should know, because they come to work with me every day. And then I’ll go chat with the septic-tank cleaner.

Jennifer Singer

The Littlest Girl Scout

I admit it. I’m not cut out to be a soccer mom.

I’m not class mom material, either.

I don’t bake homemade chocolate chip cookies. I don’t even boil water. In fact, when my daughter, Alexa, was in kindergarten, as part of a “Why I Love My Mommy”

Mother’s Day project, her teacher asked her to name her “favorite dish” that Mom cooks.

“I don’t have one,” she said.

“Oh sweetheart, there must be something your mother cooks that you love. A special dinner? Your favorite dessert?”

“My mommy doesn’t cook.”

“She must make
something,
” her increasingly desperate teacher insisted. “Jell-O?”

After lengthy consideration, my daughter listed “cereal.”

So it was with much trepidation that I recently learned Alexa wanted to be a Brownie.

I am a mom who is great at making up stories, singing off-key songs at bedtime and remembering the names of every Pokemon. But with three kids, a dog, a rabbit, a parrot and a veritable aviary of finches, life in our household is disorganized at best. Dinner is a haphazard affair, clothes always need ironing and shirts missing buttons are given safety pins in their stead. I flunked home economics in high school. Clearly, I did not have the makings of a Brownie-badge-earning mom.

“Are you sure?” I asked, trying to mask my dread. Her delighted “yes” sealed my fate.

I made it through the camping trip, even through crafts—though our potholders were decidedly ragged-looking. Then came the year’s highlight: the cookie sale. Mentally, I counted my immediate family. I figured they were good for about ten boxes. I’d buy a few as well. That brought Alexa to a total of fifteen boxes or so—not too shabby.

Her dad picked her up after the cookie sale meeting. Horrified, I watched as they struggled through the door with six CASES of cookies.
Cases!

After coming to, I managed to sputter, “What’s all this?”

“Her cookies,” my husband answered. “Each girl is assigned six cases to sell.”

“But what if we can’t sell all these?”

“We bring them back,” he said. “No big deal.”

“Oh no, Mommy!” Alexa cried out. “We have to sell them all. We just have to! The troop will make fun of me if I don’t. One of the other Brownies told me that last year, not one girl brought back any cookies.”

Apparently, we were going to be hitting up Grandma for a lot more than the four boxes I had mentally sold to her.

After ten days of ferocious selling, we had managed to sell a case and a half. Cookies were stacked in my home office from floor to ceiling—or at least that’s how I remember it. I dreamed at night of Thin Mints chasing me down dark alleys.

After four more days of selling, we still had four cases of cookies.

Then came one of those days that happen to moms like me—moms whose kids never have matching socks and whose kids’ toothbrushes end up being chewed by the dog or falling into the toilet.

On that particular day, the dog jumped in the lake after a duck. The duck escaped, but my dog resembled the Creature from the Black Lagoon. One dog bath, one muddy mom and thirteen towels later, the dog was clean. But my two-year-old son had been suspiciously quiet during the whole ordeal. In fact, all the hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end. Even more than kitchen pot-banging, TV blaring and loud bickering, all moms dread “the silence.”

You know . . .
that
silence.

“Alexa,” I said, emerging from the bathroom, mud clinging to my hair, “where’s your brother?”

“I dunno.”

I went tearing through the house. Was he coloring on my bedroom walls again? No.

I raced to the kitchen. Spilling cereal on the floor? No.

He must be in his room. Was he climbing on top of his dresser pretending to be Superman again? Not there.

“Nicholas!” I called out. Then, fearing my computer keyboard was being covered in apple juice, I ran to my office.

There sat Nicholas.

Surrounded by sixty-one opened boxes of Girl Scout cookies.

In fact, he had the cellophane for the next pack in his teeth, attempting to bust open another box. Thin Mints, Peanut Butter Buddies and Shortbread Dreams, or whatever the heck they’re called, were splayed from one end of the room to the other. Cookies were crushed beneath his chubby little feet, and crumbs covered his rosy cheeks.

“Cookies!” he squealed.

As I wrote out a check for over $250 dollars worth of Girl Scout cookies, I came to the realization that I am most definitely
not
a Brownie mom.

But my
son
? He’s the hero of Troop 408.

Erica Orloff

Off the mark by Mark Parisi

www.offthemark.com