It’s Mother’s Day. What do you want?
by CJ
It’s Mother’s Day. What do I want? Apparently I want cards, flowers, brunch and a pedicure. Also, my local supermarket is offering a discount on six cheap bottles of Chardonnay. Thank you. I’ll take them all. However, what I really want is this: a year, a week, or gosh — maybe just a day — of guilt free parenting.
How would that work? Hmmn, let’s look at how it works now.
The Current State of Motherhood
It’s 7.22 a.m. on any given Sunday. Poppy calls querulously from her crib. Even though it’s my morning off, my eyes flick open and I’m alert. Next to me, Walter continues to sleep. His eyes are sealed shut, his cheek nestles into the pillow, the duvet rises quietly with his breathe. Despite being on duty, he is asleep.
‘Walter!” I hiss at his peaceful face.
“Hmmm?”
“Poppy’s awake. It’s your turn.”
“Hmmm.” He turns slowly away from me, winding the duvet with him. After a moment, a muffled and unhappy voice says: “How long do I have her for?”
I contemplate the domestic book of accounts. Yesterday, I rose at 6.43 a.m. which means that, at 7.22 am today, he’s already done less work than I have … then, I took her for the whole morning, fed her lunch and put her down for her nap at 12.35 p.m. … which means that …
“You have her till nap time, and you can’t put her down a minute before 1 p.m..” Walter rolls out of bed with a sigh.
“I have her the whole morning?” he says, falling slowly and miserably into his clothes, “what am I going to do with her?”
I pull the duvet over my head and affect not to care.
But it’s impossible to fall back asleep. Not only can I hear my husband and daughter having fun in the nursery, but my long list of domestic chores starts to make me twitch. There’s food to prepare, laundry to fold, emails to write and overdue thank you notes to get in the post. There’s hair to be washed, books to be read, paying work to get done and a dog to be fed. And speaking of dogs, there’s so much dog hair pooling in the corners of our home that I simply must get up now and vacuum the whole house.
But this is supposed to be my morning off …
Suddenly I feel cross and resentful.
Walter and Poppy emerge from the nursery and I instantly feel guilty for seething. My child is the cleverest, cutest, funniest (etc.) human being and my husband isn’t bad himself. Warmth embraces my cockles.
Then Walter says: “Can you watch her for 15 minutes while I [shower/answer an urgent email/undertake a domestic chore].”
No way! I’m outraged — this is supposed to be my morning off. Walter, the love of my life, looks crushed.
“Okay,” I relent, “but I get an extra 20 minutes this afternoon.”
I spent the rest of ‘my morning off’ cleaning the house and feeling guilty for chiseling my husband out of 20 minutes and trying to avoid being with my daughter (who is the cleverest, cutest and funniest child on earth).
The Ideal State of Motherhood
Now, I could write at length about the ideal state of motherhood but I suspect that you have vacuuming to do. So, I’ll just show you this cover from the New Yorker magazine and imagine what’s not in the picture.
“Mother’s Day” by Chris Ware. For New Yorker Cover: May 7, 2012
What’s not shown are the mothers who, while kids & dad play happily in the park, are wrapped in duvets at home enjoying deep, innocent, guilt-free sleep. In the non-picture, their fridges are loaded with fresh veggies, the clothes are laundered and ironed, and the thank you notes were sent a month ago. All questions about the gendered division of labor within the home have been resolved with calm and big-hearted good sense. For these mothers, love, marriage and parenthood have been successfully negotiated. Everyone is calm. No-one dodges the people they love.
Happy Mother’s Day to all of my readers who ever had a mother.
Cheap glass of Chardonnay anyone?
Hahaha, I’m fascinated by the marketing around Mother’s Day. You’re a mother! Clearly you crave curdled hollandaise and crustless egg salad sandwiches! And Dove singles and cheap chardonnay and whichever shampoo it is that magically converts your shower into the world’s most exclusive spa.
In this spirit, happy Mother’s Day. I shall (guiltily) raise a glass of cheap chardonnay in your honor.
Thank you and I’m glad to hear that that glass was guiltily raised.
For Mother’s Day, my wife took off to help our one-and-only move out of the dorm and into her first apartment. She, the daughter, insists on calling it a house – “We’re moving into a house,” she says, we being herself and three other UT Austin women swimmers – but it’s really the upstairs of a house, a sublet from someone smart enough to flee the heat while daughter and friends remain and train for upcoming swim meets. Mother and daughter drove together over to Fredericksburg, straight from the airport in a borrowed car, to pick up a brand-new used Prius for the student athlete. It’s a perfect vehicle for those frequent trips to Whole Foods, Central Market, Austin Java, Rudy’s BBQ and, of course, Lulu Lemon. “The apple didn’t fall far from the tree,” one bohemian bicyclist shouted at them, good-naturedly, when they were out together not long ago. That made dark-haired, olive-complected Mom feel good because the dirty-blonde, fair-skinned child had often been mistaken for someone else’s kid. But the passerby was right: like mother like daughter – from the preference for foods to the love of Lulu Lemon and laughing at things like overly-observant bon vivants. I’m glad they’re having their mother-daughter moments but it’s awfully quiet around here with neither of them at home. On the other hand, I never would have had the quiet time to share these thoughts. Don’t tell them I did it, though; husbands have household duties, unrun errands and thank you notes that ought to be written, too. I’ll get to those eventually…
Jon, it sounds as if you found a very wise way to spend mother’s day. I’m intrigued to hear about your father’s day plans.
Ah this is great! A guilt free day of parenting, indeed. The greatest oxymoron known to man, er, or maybe that is woman.
Ok, enough of this, my Dyson is calling my name…
After 41 years of motherhood, this is what my mother’s day looked like in 2012. I slept late, ate a lovely omelet prepared by my husband, went to church at Sage Chapel (Cornell Univeristy Ithaca Campus), had a cofffee and rice krispee square, bought hanging baskets and spend the afternoon in the garden. Guilt is not in my lexicon anymore.
Oh! my son and daugher called to wish me happy mother’s day and I tell them what I have said for the last 15 years. “With children like you, everyday is mother’s day.” All the effort is worth it! I promise!
Thanks Elaine. That sounds promising!
I look forward to being in Elaine’s proverbial gardening shoes one day. I spent this Mother’s Day home alone with a sick baby, covered in various forms of…shall we say…’output’ while my older child and husband went to a relative’s house to celebrate since the 11 guests we were expecting didn’t want to visit our germy home. The lovely meal that my husband spent days preparing went with them. Well, there’s always next year…
Oh dear Leslie. That sounds like one for the records. Perhaps like my second mother’s day when Poppy learned how to take her diaper off and spread the, uh, outputs everywhere. Is that better or worse than guilt?