A glorious email from FRANCES today made me feel more human than I have in a LONG time.
Let’s just say that Frances, mired in motherhood, had a stressful last few days. So thusly she hired a babysitter and took herself on a seriously needed, two-part Me-Date: first to The Mall, where she partook of the breaded goodness of Chick-Fil-A, in glorious solitude (just her and a few thousand of her friends), and then, after bedtime, to the bottom of a (hopefully large) margarita glass.
More cows should wear ONE FOAM FINGER, and more Moms should admit that being a Mom is really hard. Every woman I’ve ever known who became a mother before me told me, (in what I perceived as a snotty, know-it-all voice), that to BE A MOM is something I can never understand, until I am one.
Well, let me tell you.
That cow gets to wash its face, hang up the wig and put the ad slogans away. The Chick-Fil-A countergirl who despise her uniform and who hates working in the mall because she sees all the kids from school who point and snicker– well she gets to graduate and to move on, or even to move up, to management, to the Gap, and even to finally pass the driving test and take off across the interstate system in an 18-wheeler.
Even 7-11 has locks on its doors.
But the Mom door is never closed, never locked. Her uniform every piece of clothes she wears, knowing full well it will get smeared with snot and ketchup, puked on with milk, at any hour of the day. She knows monotony very well. They’ve been lovers for some time now. She’ll knows she’ll never get that honorary degree in organizational management she deserves– after all, it isn’t real work.
If she’s lucky, she might get an hour eating Chick-Fil-A, alone in the foodcourt, and good drink at the end of the world’s longest day.
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