Confessions of a Scary Mommy: An Honest and Irreverent Look at Motherhood: The Good, the Bad, and the Scary (9 page)

I
often fantasize about going back in time in my shiny silver DeLorean and passing on some words of wisdom to my pre-mommy self. Of course, that selfish bitch probably wouldn’t listen to a thing I had to say, since she thought she knew everything, but I’d try nonetheless. I’d tell her to sleep in later on the weekends, because once she has kids, she’ll never sleep well again. I’d tell her to flaunt those spider vein–free legs, use more moisturizer, and deep condition more often. I’d tell her to eat her meals slowly, savoring every bite, because soon food will
be consumed out of necessity rather than pleasure. But most important, I would tell her to run to the nearest public restroom and lick the doorknob, or walk up to a sniffly stranger at the coffee shop and inhale his sneeze, or take public transportation and stand uncomfortably close to coughing passengers. However she possibly could, I would tell her to soak up all the airborne germs she could get her healthy little body on. Get sick, girlfriend, I would say. And then milk it. Because once you become a mom, you’ll never be able to get sick again.

Of course, mothers get sick. In fact, we are
constantly
sick. How could we not be? We are surrounded by snotty children who are walking diseases for a good portion of the year. They bring home sicknesses we’ve never heard of from school and from playdates. Winter months are spent wiping snot-filled noses with our long sleeves, until, eventually, we give up and just wear tank tops. The pediatrician’s office becomes our home away from home and the pharmacists know us by name. I don’t think I have felt 100 percent healthy since Lily was born. It’s always something—either a small case of the sniffles or a pounding headache or a full-blown stomach bug. I can’t recall what it felt like to get a good night’s sleep, and I’ve just become accustomed to the dull pain in my shoulders and to operating at less than optimal performance level. Children are just synonymous with sickness.

If life were fair, being sick would be the one time a mother could catch a break, the rare instance when she’d be granted time off from the routine of waking up too early and running around after other people and not having a moment to herself. She’d be able to rest for a change. Sip chicken noodle soup, even if she had to make it herself and take a steamy shower alone. Do the necessary
things to get better. But, unfortunately, nothing’s fair in parenthood and there are simply no sick days in motherhood.
Ever
.

Fathers are entirely different. When fathers are sick, they have the luxury of once again becoming children, except instead of their
own
mothers caring for them, their lucky wives get assigned to the task. There’s a reason why the line “in sickness and in health” sneaks into those wedding vows—I can think of no better reason to leave a man than for the way he copes with sickness. Now, I love my husband. I truly believe we are soul mates, my life wouldn’t be complete without him, he is the love of my life and all that crap, but when he’s sick? I have visions of stabbing him repeatedly with sharp kitchen utensils and making a run for it with our children.

When Jeff has a cold, it’s as if the world is ending. He moans and groans and pouts and whimpers audibly. He asks for drinks and the remote and for head rubs. He sleeps on the couch because the poor baby can barely muster the strength to walk up the stairs. He’s pathetic. It’s all so over-the-top that it would be amusing if I weren’t the one falling victim to his evil ways.

Last year, we were both feeling crummy. We went to get checked out, and I was diagnosed with conjunctivitis, an ear infection, and a sinus infection. Leaving the doctor’s office, I couldn’t help but feel giddy. I had orders—from a
doctor
—to take it easy and rest up. Visions of
Girls Just Want to Have Fun
and
Dirty Dancing
floated in my head. I’d get to nap on the couch and sip milk shakes and actually be waited on for once. Sure, I felt like crap, but it was worth it.
So
very worth it. I was psyched.

An hour later, Jeff came back from his doctor’s office visit with a different diagnosis: pneumonia. He was bedbound with a 104 fever and needed IV fluids. All I could think was that the
bastard had one-upped me. There I was with eyes swollen shut, nose totally clogged, and ears so full of fluid that I couldn’t hear, and I was stuck coddling
him
! To make matters worse, Lily woke up the next day with a fever. I thought about jumping off the roof but then worried that I would survive, ending up paralyzed and stuck wheeling around the kitchen for the rest of my life, making breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

If keeping kids healthy is a parents’ job, having to keep sick kids home from school is the cruelest imaginable punishment for a failed mission. My kids go to school, goddammit, unless they are running a fever, puking their guts out, or bleeding profusely. Of course, I also am a frequent visitor to the nurse’s office when my morning judgment on borderline sickness proved to be the wrong one. A couple of years ago, I was called in to pick up a tummy-aching Ben from school. As I embraced my green-faced child, I was wracked with guilt: How could I have taken him into class when he’d complained about not feeling well the hour before? What kind of monster was I, choosing grocery shopping and working at Starbucks over nursing my baby back to health? Payback came in the form of buckets’ worth of puke exploding on my chest and seeping through my bra. Chunky, curdled puke. I held his hand and did the walk of shame to the car, stinking up the hallways and vowing to keep him home the next time I was in doubt. Not surprisingly, I awoke the following morning with a stomach bug, along with a house full of three vomiting children.

There’s simply no way around it: a sick mother gets zero sympathy, but it’s just par for the course, I suppose. And one day, when I am old and weak and gray, my kids will take care of me and this all will have been worth it, right?

Right?

T
here are two types of mothers in this world: those who make one healthy meal for their entire family to enjoy as a whole, and those who cater to their children’s palates, serving a kid-friendly option for their little ones and regular food for the adults. There’s no question what the right approach is. Obviously.
I
am the type of mother who cooks one healthy, well-balanced meal of protein, vegetables, and a starch, and my entire family gobbles it all up without complaining.

Snort.

That’s the kind of mother I was
supposed
to be, at least. The one I am in some parallel, opposite-day universe where I’m also not caffeine dependent and enjoy push-ups and get in daily showers. In reality, my kids eat a separate dinner consisting of things I
know
they’ll eat, rather than things they’ll simply complain about. (Oh, and for the record, I haven’t done a push-up since high school and am usually unshowered. But you probably guessed that.) Somehow, I have become that short-order cook I always vowed
not
to be. The one who has let her children win.

It wasn’t always like this. Back when the kids were younger, they were open to trying new foods and enthusiastic about eating what was put in front of them. Salmon! Spinach! Grapefruit! Quinoa! Brussels sprouts! Up until age two, each of my children had enviable palates and I pitied the mother who made grilled cheese sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And then, it happened, shortly after Lily’s second birthday. “Here you go,” I said as I presented her with roasted beets and goat cheese, one of our favorites. “Yuck,” she pronounced, violently pushing it away. “That’s gross now.” At first, I thought it a fluke. Perhaps, she just wasn’t in the
mood
for New American that day; she was allowed to be fickle now and then. But then she also turned down the roasted vegetable lasagna and sweet potatoes and halibut that followed. “What do you want?” I cried. “What is happening?” Her eyes lit up. “Grilled cheese,” she pointedly responded. “
That’s
what I want.” It seems she’d had it the day before during a playdate and the seal was broken. For the next year, the only food that made her happy consisted of white bread and imitation cheese.

Like clockwork, grilled cheese is what each of my children suddenly wanted from two years old on—it’s like they were programmed that way, somehow. Grilled cheese
did
expand to
macaroni and cheese, peanut butter and jelly, and french fries. Typical kid fare. Even when I try to climb out of the food rut we’re in, it’s unsuccessful. “This is gross,” they cry over the homemade mac and cheese I spent hours shredding and mixing. “We want the
real
mac and cheese, the one in the blue box!” There’s nothing like a preference for Kraft to make you feel like a real nutritional failure.

Another surefire way for me to feel like this is by volunteering in the kids’ classrooms at lunchtime. Sure, there are the lunches that will make me feel like I’m in good company—the fellow peanut butter and jellies with crusts still intact and bags of grapes and Goldfish. There are even the kids who bring the same Lunchables every day, making me feel slightly better for actually doing
some
bit of assembly at five o’clock in the morning. But then there are the others. The beautiful color-coordinated Tupperware containers boasting last night’s leftovers and a rainbow assortment of fresh fruits and vegetables. The bento boxes filled with exquisite little pieces of art, fashioned out of rice, radishes, and berries. The soups still warm in thermoses and crustless, spa-worthy mini-sandwiches. There are some mouthwatering lunches in that cafeteria, but from what I’ve seen, they’re also most likely swapped for a forbidden bag of Doritos.

I keep telling myself that it can’t possibly go on like this forever. Eventually, my children will learn that there really is more to life than orange cheese and bread or noodles. There’s a whole world of turkey and stuffing and pad thai and bouillabaisse and bacon and frittatas and fish tacos just waiting for them to discover, and I’m quite sure they’ll come around.

Until then, though, I’m going to savor the silver lining: their pickiness means more deliciousness for me. So what’s the rush?