Doubting Mom-Ass

It’s true.


I still have doubts about the whats and whys of this blog thing. I mean, what you do is your business and god knows it’s nifty to pick out templates and stuff, but honestly I wonder what it says about me–yeah, I write, I’ve always written, it’s my thinking and praying and processing, but why on earth would I be emboldened to hit that “publish” button for everyone or anyone to see? Publish what? I’m not important. I don’t have anything brilliant or enlightening to share. I don’t do give-aways (Now, I love me some give-aways, but it seems to me I should know where my stuff is before I start giving away other folks’ stuff, you know?). And aside from any of that, my attitude is a little on the iffy side, if you know what I mean. (I know. It’s hard to believe, but yes, my attitude is pretty damn sucky an awful damn lot of the time. You can stop pretending to be surprised now, okay? it’s out in the open.)

We can flip through mommyblog after mommyblog…whole catalogs, lists, pages, whatever, and I gotta be honest, I wonder first, if we need all these little peeks in each other’s windows and second, how much laundry piles up while we tap our days into domestic details and milestone moments.

I really don’t know. Do we hang our days out there because we no longer meet to hang clothes and chat? Do we ask each other for Twitter follows because we don’t ask each other for anything else? The archetypal borrowed cup of sugar? Ten minutes while I pick up a kid? Motherhood is a lonely business, lonelier now, no matter how you do it. It’s work, it’s dirty, it’s tedious, and women have been producing new humans for a good long time now (quality assurance is another issue, entirely, but I digress). So is it interesting?
Uh…maybe? Sorta? Well, is there anything on tv? That could be the determining factor.


Here’s a little-known big secret of mine: autism is not as glamorous as it looks. Here’s another: multiples are not a ready-made party in the playroom.

Those are the big secrets. Now here are the not-so-big secrets–some of us doubt we’d pass the MAT (Mommy Aptitude Test) on the first try. Some of us wouldn’t even remember our pair of no. 2 pencils. Some of us wonder if we have any business at all being in this field. I guess that’s why I’m perplexed–I’m the *us* in those last two statements. I imagine that surely, surely, there must be others who wonder, but I guess it’s just not popular in mommyblogs. Totally get that. I don’t admit my doubts because I’m brave or any similar shit at all, I admit them as a disclosure, of sorts. A “just to be clear” sort of thing.

See, there’s this thing that happens around Mothers’ Day, especially to mothers of special needs kids. Suddenly, everyone is abso-freaking-lutely sure that we, by virtue of our station in life, are amazing, wonderful, selfless mothers. And they make a point to tell us. Now, everyone should get positive feedback about their momming, as long as it’s not too big a stretch. Yes. Absolutely. And it’s nice, and it’s well-meant, but it kind of amuses me…who can say whether my sons are duct-taped to their chairs even as I’m writing this, hmmmm? Well...can you? 
 They are (currently) not, btw, but the day is young. I’ll post pictures, if the situation changes.



I do okay, I guess…”bedtime w/o bloodshed” and all that is pretty much my gold standard, but really? My gorgeous college G.P.A. ( 2.45 first time through) is still a fair assessment of my effort and ability (which is annoying as hell because I only had that G.P.A because I was being all “We Got the Beat” and ”Girls Just Want to Have Fun” ’80s-neon-tastic. I think that’s why. Okay, I like to think that’s why. *ahem*) I rarely get similar opportunities and distractions these days. Why, I haven’t danced on big danceclub speakers in…oh, lifetimes…*sigh*

You know what? I’ve sort of lost my point. It’s raining, my kids are bored, LRHF needs another size 6 pull-up change, my rainbarrels are leaking, and I opened the gardening season yesterday by slicing both hands up sharpening bypass shears (“safety third” is my other gold standard). So maybe I’m just not in a really good mommy-place. Sunshine and lemonade and picnics and gymboree…nope. Not there. And maybe I feel a bit guilty about it because my sons deserve sunshine and lemonade and picnics and gymboree. They deserve someone with a higher mommy G.P.A. Yeah, they’re a bunch. They’re quirky and different and funny and maddening, but they are so much like me that I cannot but confess it.

Hmmm…there’s an idea:  Maybe it doesn’t matter that I’m not fascinating or wise or even certain that mommying is my thing. Maybe that’s not why I write. Maybe I write because I’d like you to know my sons, and believe me, they are worth knowing, even if only for the comic relief. I started sending bits and pieces of my work to my brother…I desperately want him to know his maddening lunatic nephews. And I guess that goes for you as well.

Told you they're a bunch.

So, these are my sons, ladies and gentlemen:

Here they are...

They are remarkable and they are a good reason to write. Who they are, what they do, and who they will be is immeasurably more important than any dusty old mommy-tip I might drag out and type up as wisdom.

And the best part? They are in spite of me. I do believe they are impervious to my ”nots” and “not sures.” I think we’d know by now, don’t you?

So, um….Tah-Daaaaahhhh!!!!

Let me tell you about my sons, Big Boy, Fuzzy, and Little Red Headed Fellow.

They’re worth it.