Maternal Mayhem

Ask any gal that’s ever spawned, adopted, or raised a child and assuredly they will tell you that motherhood is all at once a frightening and enlightening experience. I’m far from joining the cult of mommy myself, however, I know that someday in the distant future my life will be full of breast pumps, diapers, pureed sweet potatoes, swaddling, and Dr.Suess. This is a far from daunting prospect to me, it’s an exciting endeavor that I can’t wait to embark upon.

While I certainly don’t carry a shred of the ubiquitous soccer mom, homogenized, modern day Carol Brady qualities that most mainstream mamas tote around today, I have an extremely palpable maternal streak. Ask anyone that knows me. I think it’s safe to say that this quality of mine stems from the fact that I had to mother myself for the majority of my youth.

My own mother was rather unreliable for the bulk of my upbringing, with the exception of the earlier years of my youth. During the early days, she was a parental powerhouse. She was a vivacious, attentive (almost to the point of it being overbearing), dependable, enthusiastic, and exceedingly loving mother. She omitted any semblance of a career in order to stay home with me. Unfortunately, due to the circumstances and the emotional caveats life thwarts at folks, my mother became increasingly unreliable for the latter portion of my childhood and the entirety of my teen years.

Alcoholism is an unfortunate disease that’s been present on my maternal side for generations. Due to her genetic predisposition to hitting the sauce and her own internal distortion, my mother went from being passionate about volunteering at my elementary school to passionately volunteering to toss back shots of vodka at the bar near our house. Naturally, her new hazardous habit brewed a dizzying array of tension and dysfunction in my household. Her addiction really hit its peak when I was in the second grade. One particularly stressful evening, my mom decided to self-medicate at a bar in midtown Sacramento. Stupidly, she decided to get behind the wheel of the family mini-van that night. While under the influence, my mother drove down the wrong side of a one-way street and got into a head-on collision. My mother remained unscathed, but managed to put the two recipients of her poor judgment into critical condition.

My relationship with my mother was completely altered from that night on. As a result of being issued a DUI, she wound up spending a year in prison. Her sentence was enacted December 19, 1993. Nothing resonates more holiday cheer than visiting your mother through a plate glass window in a woman’s prison on Christmas Day. Sadly, due to the lack of presence accumulated during my mother’s stint in the hoosegow, that plate glass window has still remained between us to this day-in a figurative sense of course.

After my mother’s release, there was a distance between us that was horribly isolating as a child. Sure I had my mom back, but she had missed a valuable chunk of my development and was out of sync with everything in my life. I forgave my mother for her mistake, but couldn’t help but look at her through critical eyes. They say the first sign of true maturity is realizing your parents are humans who make mistakes. Well, after that incident I was bitchslapped with a lethal dose of maturity. I not only harbored resentment towards her, but also felt an inability to regain that connection we shared when I was a toddling toddler.

I was nine-years-old when my mom returned and soon after that I was in my pre-teens. Any mother knows what it’s like attempting to get along with a pre-pubescent, hormonal rollercoaster of a daughter. It’s a nightmare. I’m not speaking from experience exactly, but I know what a bitchy terror I was to my mother in those days so I can imagine it wasn’t any easy feat to push through.

Throughout my high school years, my maternal grandparent’s health began to deteriorate and my mother was called upon to care for them. She spent all of her available time taking care of them, which I found admirable, however, my mother serving as a first hand witness to her parent’s demise came with copious amounts of pain. This emotionally rattling saga my mother was battling through fueled her alcoholism more and more, thus fueling an already uneven and dysfunctional marriage to my father. After both of my grandparents had passed away it was discovered that my mother had been having an affair with some slimy bastard from her favorite bar. He enabled her to drink, something my father never would encourage, and for that wretched enabling my mother loved this spineless hick that went by the name of Dudley.

I often refer to that era of my disenfranchised youth as “The Dudley Years.” It was then that my mom completely disappeared from my life. She spent the years that immediately followed my grandparent’s passing by sporadically and erratically going on cross-country ventures with her new lover while my father and I were left to our own devices and means of getting by.

My father is a wonderful, respectable, and morally sound man. Unfortunately, he wasn’t very domestic and works a very demanding job. Due to that, he and I lived off of a diet of TV dinners, fast food, and Stagg chili. Despite his obligations with work, he remained the one reliable constant in my life. He managed a way to stay involved in my school, attend the dozens upon dozens of plays I was involved in all over the greater Sacramento area (not to mention chauffeuring me to and from said plays), and he even showed a great act of love by forgiving my mother for her shenanigans. It’s thanks to my father that I know what makes a good parent and person.

It was during my sophomore year in high school that I discovered Children’s Theater. It was so refreshing to be surrounded by the radiant and pure energy that children naturally emanate. The enthusiasm that accompanies youth is so inspiring and beautiful. It was when I discovered this force working with children, that I knew I had to contribute to as well as keep in my life.

After high school, I began teaching at Gymboree Play&Music, a festive and wacky stomping ground for infants, toddlers, and kids under five. It was a wonderful experience. I was basically paid to sing nursery rhymes, do arts and crafts, play on playground equipment, teach music, and blow bubbles for a plethora of buoyant babes.
By working there, I built relationships with the families that attended gymboree and began to do part-time nannying for a variety of families. It’s really an honor to have a parent allow you to take a major part in the benefit and well being of their children.

After a flavorful visit to New York City I decided I needed a change in environment and knew NYC would be a great place to seek out a job as a full-time, professional nanny. After a very short time of job seeking, I was hired by a marvelous family to be a live-in nanny in the heart of Manhattan.

Ryo and Mina, five and three, respectively, are the precious darlings’ I have the wonder of looking after. I spend a good forty hours a week tending to their well-being and there isn’t a day that goes by where my heart doesn’t swell in response to being in their presence. Child-care is no easy job; I’ll be the first to admit. But with copious amounts of patience, love, and sanity- it’s doable. While tantrums, potty-training, quelling sibling rivalry, and energy drainage aren’t anywhere near glamorous, they’re a small and relatively tolerable aspect of child-care and don’t make me doubt wanting to join the Parenthood. Picking the kids up from school and seeing their elated faces, Mina falling asleep in my lap everyday on the cab ride home from preschool, Ryo teaching me how to play chess (he’s a smart little bugger), dancing wildly to Classic Rock (I’m shaping their musical taste), and just giggling over the wonders of life with those two make me look forward to my future as a parent.

When I think about my mom and her issues with being a mother, I realize that she never regretted becoming a mother; she just never had the chance to be anything else. She had my sister with her first husband right out of high school, eliminating any chance or choice of enjoying her twenties and discovering herself. I think one of the main ingredients in becoming a wise and decent parent is having an idea of oneself and the wisdom that’s brought out from the precious stain of experience.

My mother and I get along far better now that I’m an adult and we’ve had the grace of time to heal many of the wounds in our relationship. With both of her daughters grown, she’s living on her own for the first time ever in her fifties. She still grapples with her alcoholism but is aware she needs to heal her own wounds.
When it’s time for me to spawn my own offspring, I’ll be thankful that I waited and built an arsenal of experience to extract wisdom from in order to pass down to my children. Until that time, I have the joy of practicing with Ryo and Mina.