Mother of the Year

I know a few mothers who’d run away with a trophy for Mother of the Year. Their well-behaved, mannerly, and gracious children are festooned with bows and ribbons, gifts to us all. Their pants are neat; their dress pleats, ironed. Their lunches include a baked good. These mothers never grimace or growl at their kids, no matter how tired the women may be, no matter how bad their days. And when they show up on the white top to retrieve the fruits of their loins after a long day of closet reordering, laundering, meal making, and toilet scrubbing, they are in fresh gym clothes or Capri pants and espadrilles, their nails buffed and hair coiffed, save a stray lock to show that effort has, indeed, been made that day. Their outside-the-home work is as a volunteer on this committee or that.

I look at them all with envy.

My daughter’s hair is unruly beneath her ponytail holder. Sometimes we forget to brush it because we are running late or I am writing. One of Serena’s too-small, grayed, hand-me-down, white shirts is missing a sleeve button, and I have to pin it at the too-short wrist; I know enough to pin it so that only a small sliver of silver shows, but a missing button is obvious. Her pants are sometimes wrinkled because she emulates me—I am not so tidy—by throwing her clothes in a heap on her chair.

My daughter talks back to me, stamps her feet, yells. I yell back. Most of the time I yell first. I grew up in a loud household and so am used to yelling, though I know it doesn’t excuse the behavior. My husband’s house was quiet and full of a sweetness that makes my family sometimes appear inferior. But these are appearances. With my family, you know where you stand. You know that when they yell at you, it’s because they care enough to risk a heart attack to get you to listen harder. And loud as they are is kind as they are, too. Give you the shirt off their backs and a job that pays money to buy a few more. They love you better and stronger and longer, even if louder.

In the back seat of the car, my daughter yells, “C’mon, you idiot!” to the cars in front of us. She hasn’t yet figured out when to yell; most of them are stopped for a red light. But I thank the couple lucky stars that she’s saying idiot and not asshole. I pray that she’s not doing it in another mother’s car.

My daughter doesn’t eat what’s in front of her at someone else’s house. She is not so forthcoming with pleases and thank yous, even though we’ve instilled those values in her.

Serena is an only child. This in itself is bad motherhood; a good mother would have given her kid another for playing and learning and knocking down and making eat something indigestible. Alone, my daughter talks to herself. She is adept at accents and has mastered the nuances of English, Scottish, and Irish, though she doesn’t know it. (Her Shrek is distinct from her Harry Potter.) The dogs are her siblings; she plays ball with them, pushes them down, makes them eat dirt. “You’re my best friend, Chance,” she says in the kitchen.

On a Saturday morning, Serena gets up early and goes downstairs to watch cartoons by herself. Lately, she has been calling her aunt to ask if her baby cousin can come and play. At 7:45, I hear them making arrangements by phone. Whenever they can’t come over, Serena mopes. “I wish I had a baby,” she says. She reminds me of a baby I had in my tummy once, a baby that didn’t make it.

And so I arrive every day to the white top, these days dressed in grubby clothes smeared with silicone, and feel just a little small. I wonder if some of the mothers are whispering about my gained weight or my messy hair, my lack of makeup. Maybe they know my husband does laundry, vacuums, and washes the floor, even though he puts in more paid work hours than I. School, for us, is free because of those work hours.

At least I am never late; in fact, I am sometimes more than ten minutes early, waiting near the waving American flag in the cold or the heat, not saying much to retired old guys picking up their grandchildren; they don’t know about the competition.

My daughter runs to me with open arms, yelling, “Mommy!” as if she is both surprised and excited to see me. She hugs me around the waist and squishes my boobs, while the other children wait quietly in a line, as if someone were going to examine their teeth, pay, and take them home.

My daughter’s actions betray what I think to be the truth. It’ll probably be a couple more years before she figures out that I’m not Mother of the Year. She’s starting to suspect this, though, and often comments, aping her father, that I spend a lot of time at the computer—bad mother but good writer.

Serena sometimes sits on my lap and reads my rough drafts of essays, looks at the pictures in my blog. She asks me regularly if she can type, and then she writes stories and poems. She knows that a red, wavy line means a misspelled word; she hates it and, when she has exhausted all her spelling options, will growl until I give her the answer. She knows how to go to her favorite website and print out pictures of animals to color. This morning, I had her read the paragraph under a picture of a piranha. (As I type this, I get a red, squiggly line, so I call to her in the kitchen to spell piranha for me. She comes in with her printout to see my wavy line and give me the proper spelling, pleased that even writers misspell.)

We had plans to write a Goosebumps-style of book together called Mombie, about a mom who’s a zombie, naturally. She’s already begun:

As my mom left I got a strange feeling why? who knows when they came back I saw my mom had green goo coming out of her arm. I went to bed and my mom took a bath the green stuff would not come off. I fear it was some kind of monster scene or something. 2 yers later I was afraid as I went to the park I sow sum sort of like mutent goo like the kind on my mom the night before all I know that is the kind.

She has written poetry, too.

When I see the children lined up after school, their shirts so white, their good mothers come to fetch them, I shrink in my grimy sweats. Maybe I shouldn’t. I know from play dates that not all of these children are so polite, sometimes pushing away a plate of grapes, getting up from a delicious lunch without so much as a “see ya.” I imagine that they talk back to their moms, too, and stamp their feet and have six-foot tantrums. I know some of them play video games and watch too much TV and don’t eat enough vegetables. Those moms probably yell, too, though their lungs might be less developed than mine, their skills less practiced, or maybe they do it all with intonation and facial expression. I hope they do. I hope I am not alone. And maybe they freshen up just before coming to school. Appearance can be everything. I only look like I don't care.

The kids of those Mothers of the Year win soccer championships, play in the school band, treat their siblings with kindness and respect. Mine’s just a little girl, but so far, she hasn’t done me wrong. Of course you'd have to forgive her the dog kicks and the snits when she doesn't get her way. But her writings and drawings tickle me to tears. She reads and plays the autoharp and makes up her own songs on the guitar. She rides her bike and scooter with abandon, skates and swims with skill. I am proud of her often; I have to be at least a little proud of me.

The fruit of my loins is this ripe little mango—fragrant, exotic, sweet; inspired and inspiring; vibrant, with a hint of tang. A sometimes-bitter peel belies the goodness beneath. She's no Child of the Year, and I'm no Mother of the Year. We're just folks—folks who should know better than to compare themselves to others.


More than envy, I respect those mothers. They are good. But maybe the difference between them and me is that they are also good to themselves.*

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[Note: I read my first draft to my husband and daughter this morning. Once, somewhere in the middle, Serena got up to hug me. When I finished, I asked if they liked the essay. My husband thought it was a little too self-revealing and was surprised by the things I admitted. My daughter said she did not like it. I asked her why. “Because you are the mother of the year, and I love you.]

*This has been published for several days with several different endings. The last incarnation was 9:04, 4/11