Mother's Day and a Tribute to Mothers, Part 2

Part two belongs to the other half of the mom coin for those who are married. It's the mother-in-law. Now, this title brings terror to many people who did not have the good fortune of marrying into a family that, well, liked them. Thankfully, I don't have that problem. We did have a rough start, my in-laws and me, since I'm kind of an acquired taste, I think, but now we get along like family (which means sometimes we all can't stand each other, but we love each other like crazy).

My mother-in-law, Rita, is a lot of the reason for that. Imagine, if you will, a very short woman with the most Mrs. Santa Claus face you can imagine, and give her short black hair and the most hilarious, recognizable laugh in the world. That's Rita! She has even, honestly, been compared to Mrs. Santa Claus before, and you can't help but see the resemblance.

It is nearly impossible to not like this woman (I know of one person who doesn't, and she is a whack job). Rita is sparklies and smiles and a twinkle in the eye rolled up into a little ball of shortness, put on this world solely to prove that the best things come in small packages (she's only barely five feet tall). She's also somewhat age-defying. When I first met her and my future sister-in-law, I could not tell which was the mother and which was the sister. Not because my sister in law looks old, but because Rita look so YOUNG! She's barely sprouting silver hairs, and she's past 50, it's disgusting. (They were both wearing bandanas when I first met them, so hair wasn't a distinguishing feature.


The first time I saw Rita, I was technically spying. I had been cleaning an older lady's house, and I hadn't known that a guy I was crushing on lived right across the street. And I wouldn't have known, except when my mom came to pick me up, down the street came walking that guy, Peter, and a short lady that had to be his mom. They were both wearing those tape thingies they put on you after you give blood, and when they got to the house, Pete opened the door for his mom and they went inside.


Um, cute. Not only was this guy totally okay with being seen with his mom, but he had gone with her to give blood, and was obviously polite and well-taught enough to know to open the door for her. I was all twitterpated, my mom was gushing with approval, and just over two years later, I married that guy.

Rita was always miraculously tolerant of me while Pete and I were dating. My father-in-law and I butted heads on a frequent basis, since we're both similarly strong-willed, just slightly off-kilter from one another. But Rita and I usually got along very well. She has an unparalleled enthusiasm for the little things in life, like anything sparkly or glittery, flowers in spring, the miracle of air conditioning, and finding a pair of slippers that is just right.

She finds these moments, the little ones scattered liberally through life, and she celebrates every single one of them. Things that no one else thinks about or notices, Rita sees it. She is of the opinion that God must be awfully fond of sparklies, because he put them everywhere. Yes, I live with this woman, and it is a riot.

She also tells the best joke in the world, about a bell ringer. And the joke, really, is not THAT funny. You know what is funny? The way she tells it! She gets so into telling this joke, and she starts laughing halfway through, and we are all beside ourselves because she is just so FUNNY!

And it doesn't get old, having her tell it. It gets funnier every time! I had her tell it on my wedding day, when we were standing in my backyard after the ceremony, and we have a video of me standing there, holding my bouquet and twirling my dress around my legs because it's so hot, while Rita tells this joke off-screen. She's wonderful at humoring me.

Another thing she's wonderful at is being a mom. She turned out three kids that, while they are quirky enough to pull neck and neck with my family's particular brand of weirdness, they're all awesome. Awesome people don't just happen, they take a lot of work to make sure they don't end up screwed up somewhere.

And then I jumped into her lovely work and set about messing things up as quickly as possible, but I think she likes me anyway.

I don't think anyone could ask for a better mother-in-law. She accepted me into her family, and treats me like I've always been here (I live in the same house, so she definitely has plenty of opportunity to make my life miserable if she wants). She is unfailingly supportive of the people in her life, no matter what kinds of successes or failures or whatever come to pass. She's a perfect grandma to my daughter, who is growing up in the most loving environment anyone could come up with, surrounded by people who adore her more than words can say.


Rita is right in the middle of that, being the good-humored, easy-going, loving glue that keeps it all together and functioning properly. Heading off arguments before they get going, dishing out gratitude and praise when it's deserved and even sometimes
when it's not, doing her best to keep our home a peaceful, welcoming place for those who live here or just come to visit. Despite the dog hair she utterly loathes, balling up on the hall floor.


So this is a tribute to Rita, and everything she has done and still does in the name of Mother, even to kids like me that aren't her own, that she isn't required to love. The unconditional love she shares with the people around her is something they remember her by, that and her singular, unique laugh that you can recognize even across a huge, crowded room. She's just a woman that makes you smile, even if the last thing you feel like doing is smiling.


Happy Mother's Day, Rita. And thank you for letting me be one of your kids.

How the Baby Grew Up

I had another one of those moments a minute ago when I think about my daughter and kind of . . . sit there in awe and shock and completely unadulterated terror for a second about how fast things are changing. Thankfully these moments don't happen too frequently, or I'd be a basketcase, but I just had one. Allow me to explain . . .

So, Sammy starts preschool in one week. I know. A week ago she was still wearing toddler size clothes that come from the baby section, and then this week suddenly she knows her alphabet, is reading the letters off the label on the ketchup bottle, and we have to buy her clothes from the little girl section at the store.

Seriously. She picked an absolutely hideous pink and white zebra striped jumper to wear for her first day of school. I wanted the light pink, yellow, and orange plaid, or the cute striped one of the same color scheme, or the blue shirt and pant set with little chalk drawn hearts in different colors. But no. She wants the zebra stripes. Because she loves zebras. And it hasn't occurred to my nearly 5 year old that zebra stripes in preschool is a bit much. It doesn't help that I have exactly one bra that is anything other than boring and it happens to be zebra stripes (only fun one they had), which makes it the default when Sammy picks out my bra for me (don't ask how this got started, I still don't know).

Anyway, where were we? Oh, me freaking out a little that my baby is growing up. See, I can kind of figure out how this is catching me weird. It's because up until now, for Sammy's whole life, she's always been at home. She hasn't had daycare or anything like that to go away every day for, no schedule to meet. She was still a baby, a toddler, something other than a little girl in school.

But now . . . this is the precipice of a completely different time in her life. From now on, my baby is a student, a school kid, and for the next 14 years of her life, she will be going to school 9 months of the year. No, it's not like she's leaving home to go to a boarding school on the East Coast. But it's weird. Good and bad weird. Good because the child is driving me absolutely nuts, increasingly so over the last year or so. I think a nice 4 hour break 4 days a week sounds DIVINE.

But it's also bad, because . . . she just won't be my baby anymore. She is officially and irrevocably out of her toddler stage. And yeah, she hasn't been a toddler for something like 2 years now, but she's still kind of been in that group in my head. She's still been the baby. And now . . . nope. Not anymore. She is a grown up little girl who is going to school. And in two years, she starts elementary school, first grade, full time school. Which might be another big change, I don't know. I just know that this one, this leap from baby to preschooler, is a weird thing for me.

She is going to have so much fun. She's going to get to interact and play with a bunch of little kids her own age. She's going to suck up information and learning so fast, and I know she's going to love it. She'll have an absolute ball! And I'm sure she'll make new friends, and get to love her teachers, and I think she's just going to be the type of kid that loves school. I'm really excited for her.

But I sure will miss my baby. She'll always be my baby, in a lot of ways, but she's past that age now where she's still my toddler running around the house with jingle bells on her shoes so I can find her. She's a big girl. And her life is about to change in a major way. And so is mine.

I'm looking forward to making the journey with her. And at the same time, already missing my baby.

Mommyphobia

I've been having that kind of week . . . the kind where you look at your sweet child(ren) and honestly understand why some creatures eat their own young. Oh yes. You moms know what I'm talking about.

First of all let me put this out there, I am SO NOT Mommy of the Year material. To be quite frank, I'm not all that good at being a mom. It's just really difficult for me. Probably because I'm a selfish, self-involved person, especially with my free time, and sharing that time is incredibly difficult for me. This is not something that Supermom deals with, I swear. Supermom always plays with her kids and they always look nice and act polite and never do naughty things, and Supermom herself is so disgustingly good at it that you kind of want to bash her head into a wall just to give her a handicap to put her about level with yourself.

So. Mommyphobia. Let me explain. Mommyphobia is what you have when you find yourself completely and utterly overwhelmed and stifled by the cute little blessings in your life. You love them dearly, you always will, but if you could hire a babysitter for the day, you would do it and run away for a few hours without a backward glance. Just to go somewhere to get that crazed look out of your eye that makes you want to take a baseball bat to every single toy in the house.

It's like being claustrophobic (fear of small spaces), agoraphobic (anxiety in situations where it is perceived to be difficult or embarrassing to escape), and suffocating all at once. You feel panic, sheer and utter panic, and it's a very unstable lid that you're keeping on it all. You want to run away, you want to scream, you want to bury your head under your pillows and cry. All that is happening is your child wants you to play, just take the big giraffe and follow her prompts and play house with the little giraffe, but it feels like you're being water boarded and there's no way out.

As you can imagine, this is a problem. This is a situation that really has no solution. The best you can do is turn on one of those sickeningly happy and perky kids shows that you hate, send your little angel in to watch it, and hide for a bit. Eat a pound of chocolate, chug a 64 oz. Dr. Pepper, turn on soothing music, try to back away slowly from that anxiety attack you've been flirting with. If you have a babysitter, now would be the time. If you have a spouse or family around to help, now would be the time. Preserve your sanity while you can!

Because you know that in fifteen minutes, your little darling will be coming to barge in on your little cocoon of seclusion, waving around another plastic toy to play with, demanding string cheese and chocolate milk, and you are going to have to suppress the urge to scream while you smile and remind them to say please.

You love them, you adore them, you really do. But some days you feel a stunning oneness with the creatures that eat their own young.