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Broke Wife, Big City
Bad Mom
By Aprill Brandon
I feel this should go without saying, but judging by the amount of hate
mail I’ve gotten recently, apparently it does, in fact, need to be
said.
I love my son.
More than anything.
More than my own life.
More than coffee.
COFFEE, people.
I’m not just willing to die for him, I’m willing to kill for him if it
comes down to it. Granted, the only weapons in my house are a 32-pound
dog and a frying pan, but I will throw both at your face if you even
feign that you mean to harm my kid.
So, yes, I love my baby. And I love being a mom. I could talk (or
write) for days non-stop about his every adorable facial tic and all
the amazing ways he’s developing into a person. Seriously. Just ask my
husband, who gets an extremely detailed run-down of what Riker did that
day the second he comes home from work.
Me: “Guess what your son did today!? He pulled the dog’s tail and then
shoved all the dog hair in his mouth! It was so cute. Well, up until he
coughed out that hair ball. But still. I wish I would have recorded it.”
Him: “That’s great, sweetie. Now would you mind getting out of the way
so I can get out of the car?”
Me (not moving): “And then he had peas for lunch and it got all over
his face and it was so cute that I took 27 almost identical photos of
it with my phone, here look at them, and then…”
Him: “…(sigh)…”
Needless to say, my life is ten thousand times better with Riker in it
and if I die tomorrow, with my last breath I can honestly say that I am
dying a happy woman.
Except, it’s not needless to say. Because more than once I’ve been
accused of being a Bad Mom.
See, we all have our ways of dealing with the stress of parenting. Some
people eat the stress away. Some lock the bathroom door and just sit
there on the floor, staring vacantly at the wall for an hour. Some hire
a babysitter and head out for a night on the town. I’ve even heard
urban legends of strange creatures that do an odd ritual called
exercising, where they force themselves to move in a vigorous manner to
alleviate stress and maintain good health.*
*Science has yet to actually study these mythological creatures up
close since one has never been caught out in the wild. Mainly because
most scientists refuse to jog to catch up with them.
As for me? I write about it. For over a decade now I’ve been writing
this humor column. It started out when I was that lowliest of low
creatures, an intern for a small town paper, and has continued in
different newspapers and media outlets across the country as well as on
my own website. And for all those years the main subject has been the
same: Finding the humor in everyday life, mostly using my own life as
fodder.
And my own life now is all about raising my child. So, I take those
frustrating days when he won’t stop crying because he’s teething and
those surreal moments where you find yourself saying things like “if
you’d just stop poking yourself in the eye, you’d probably feel
better,” and turn them into amusing (or at least I hope amusing)
800-word anecdotes each week.
And as the words amass on the page, I can feel myself relaxing, feeling
better. I pour it all out. And in the end, it makes me a better mom,
refreshed and ready to tackle another diaper blowout, where he grabs
his poopy naked butt and smears it on his face before I can stop him,
with a smile.
However, writing honestly about parenthood, while it will gain you some
fans, also garners enormous amounts of criticism. Because in our
society, raising children is Very Serious Business. And making fun of a
baby or modern parenting or daring to say that the entire process is
anything less than an amazing blessing we should be thankful for each
day really, REALLY pisses some people off.
And so I get called a bad mom, an ungrateful mom. And my poor, poor
son, who people feel so bad for because he has someone like me for a
mom. He deserves better.
I know I shouldn’t let it get to me. But the first thing I learned when
I became a mom is that guilt, a lot of guilt, comes with the job. So, I
feel guilty for all the regular mom stuff (am I doing this right?) and
then doubly guilty when someone doesn’t think it’s funny that I
compared my baby to a dog in my column (am I ruining his life just to
make some cheap jokes?).
There is nothing worse than being called a Bad Mom. Even if it’s by a
stranger. Even if you know it isn’t true.
Because being a parent is hard and secretly we are all a little worried
that we might be bad at it.
But that’s exactly why I think it’s so important that we be able to
laugh at ourselves from time to time. We’ll go insane if we don’t. Or
at least I will. I’d much rather view raising my baby as a comedy of
errors rather than a tragedy of sleepness nights. Or worse, as a boring
corporate lecture where I have to follow a PowerPoint of parenting
rules.
Only time will tell if this particular strategy really did make me a
Bad Mom. But until then, I know my son will grow up in a house filled
with laughter. A house also filled with a lot of crying, barking and
exclamations of “No! No! We don’t eat Mommy’s mascara!”.
But mostly, hopefully, laughter.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go teach my son to roll over and
maybe, if there’s time, go fetch me the newspaper.
Can’t get enough of Aprill? Can’t wait until next week?
Check out her website at http://aprillbrandon.com/
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