The Mother Hood

I live in a rough part of the hood called the Mother Hood. It doesn't matter if you have a baby, if you have anything in your house you feed and clean the toilet after, then you live in the Mother Hood too.

It's an ever changing neighborhood with small shoes and big shoes, fur balls and toys missing body parts. This week I decided I'd like to exchange my left hand for a claw that grabs toys and a small dirt devil vacuum in place of a foot. I could still walk; I'd clank a little, but the house would be clean because I'd leave the vacuum foot on full suction all the time and my hand claw would hold way more than the average five fingers.

It's like I can't stop organizing. I have organized and organized and once I get something organized I find something else to organize and finally I've gotten to the point that I realize, apparently I'm not very good at organizing. If I was good at organizing...wouldn't I be done by now? When will I reach this level of organization that helps streamline our lives instead of creating more things to do around the house?

My sole purpose of having a child was to have an assistant housekeeper - I was an assistant housekeeper when I was small, but it's also become obvious that my mother had a much tighter work schedule than myself. Plus, I listened to my mother until the age of 15. I did not expect the four-year-old I birthed to go on strike so early in life. You'll recognize my kid as the one parading on the corner with a sign that says TOO SHORT TO SORT!

I'm not completely unreasonable. I give her an allowance for the work she does. But then she started Pre-Kindergarten and some kids told her they actually get real money as an allowance. I'd been allowing my kid to eat at our dinner table and have her own bedroom for four years...I thought I had allowed enough. Turns out word really gets around at the school water fountain, along with this year's flu and last year's common cold.

A person has no idea what kind of person they really are until they become a parent or accidentally fall into the sinkhole that is daily responsibility. In my head, before I had a kid and four dogs, I imagined myself to be a little bit of a stickler - what I say goes. In reality, I am way more of a softie than I thought I was. I count to three, but I count to three really slowly and even throw in half numbers and decimal points. I have tried the "you're going to bed without dinner" threat which resulted in me sneaking snacks to my kid's bedroom while she was in timeout. I don't want to end up on CNN as the woman that starved her four-year-old for throwing a fit at the dinner table.

Mothers have wild imaginations; sometimes I think if I don't do or say or hug or discipline the right way that my daughter will end up on CNN herself - and everybody always blames the mother. I'll take responsibility for her good days, but I have to say, I don't know where those bad ones come from. I was honestly too scared to misbehave as a young child. I don't know what I thought would happen, but I watched a lot of Annie, so I probably thought my parents would leave me in an orphanage with Carol Burnett. It worked out for Annie, but I knew I didn't have those cute red curls, nor could I sing and dance.

I now find myself trying to imitate my parents completely out of lack of options. We have a little paddle, which is actually a paint stirring stick. I sit it on top of the refrigerator to have close by in case my child's toosh needs reminded who's boss. My parents had an actual wooden paddle that had been passed down through decades, with my aunts' and uncles' childhood signatures on it. Whenever it was pulled off the top of the refrigerator, I knew it was for my brothers. I rarely got spanked, but I do use it as a threat...only since being told, "Mommy you really don't spank hard. It doesn't really hurt."

I stepped up my game right then and there now everybody is afraid of my paint stirring stick. Especially me. I wince when I have to pull it down off the fridge and start shaking if I actually have to use it to threaten. I haven't technically used it in almost a year, but just the sight of the thing gets the job done so far.

The Mother Hood is a tight knit community of tired, over-extended women that are dealing with small people with big personalities. The difficult part is the mothers are changing all the time too. I'm not the same mother that I was when I first brought home the baby. I have finally started that thing everyone has been recommending called a "routine."

The scariest part of the Mother Hood is that once you're in...you're in for life. I had been warned about that stipulation by older members of the Mother Hood, and four years later it's finally sunk in. I might as well put the paint stirring stick in my purse. We're going to be together for a very long time.