photo by David Andrews

The Golden Rule

by Alison Lebovitz

Parents are expected to do a lot of things for their children, but let’s face it – moms are expected to do EVERYthing. And we are expected to do them exceedingly well and without question or complaint. This isn’t meant as a personal affront to my husband, or to any dads out there or grandparents or uncles or aunts or anyone else who has the pleasure of raising a child these days. And it is also not intended to be some profound realization about the state of womanhood fueled by the current feminist movement. It’s just a somewhat obvious epiphany I recently had in the car rider line at school.

It was a Tuesday and while driving my kids to school, they were excitedly discussing a special school program that was taking place that Thursday night. It suddenly dawned on me that I had “double booked” my calendar, having committed to an important meeting that same evening. When I apologetically admitted that I wasn’t sure I was going to make it to the school event, our six–year-old irately and immediately said, “What?  You won’t be there? You know, you are NOT being a very good mom these days. This is the second thing you have missed in a month!” He was referring, of course, to the annual holiday lunch at school which I had also “double booked” by agreeing to chaperone a field trip for our fifth grader that day. But even though his words were just a typical and visceral reaction of a disappointed child, they also really hurt my feelings. I’m not a bad mom – just a poor scheduler. Of course, with little time or opportunity to rationally respond or make my case, I simply replied, “You know, I’m only one person. I can’t do it all.” And as he was about to jump out of my minivan and head up the stairs to school, his parting words to me were, “Yes you can, Mom!”

I then realized that the weight of my own mother and generations of “do it all mothers” before me was now on my shoulders. I had signed up for a job that has no rulebook, but for which there is a single Golden Rule that all mothers must obey – Thou shalt do it all.

And our children’s roles are not to give us welcoming words of encouragement, daily doses of appreciation or casual kudos on our hard work. That’s what our spouses and therapists are for. Our children, instead, are there to keep us on our toes, to set impossible expectations they have no doubt we can achieve and to always remind us to sync our iPhones with our husband’s Blackberries so that things like double booking can be avoided at all cost.

As I drove home a bit dismayed, I thought about all the things my mother used to do for us, and still does, without pause or praise. She maintained what was no doubt a precarious balance of work and home, of being a wife and a mother, with the utmost grace and gratitude. She was like Betty Crocker, Jane Fonda and Mary Tyler Moore all rolled up in one. And to this day, when she walks into a room, I swear I can hear that commercial for Enjoli perfume playing somewhere in the background. “I can bring home the bacon, da da da da dum…”

And of course, all the things I came to automatically expect as a child I can now fully appreciate as a mother.  Because there is only one person on this earth who would chew second hand gum when her child can’t find a trashcan, who will untie knotted shoelaces with her teeth without once considering where those shoes have been, and who can always figure out a way to be two places at one time – a mother. That’s why tough guys get the word “Mom” tattooed on their arms, why football players instinctively yell, “Hi, Mom!” into every television camera and why a child can be sitting in the kitchen right next to his father and will still yell across the house asking his mother to get him a glass of milk.

Of course, this epiphany did nothing to help reconcile my immediate situation and my unfortunate double booking. But luckily, the weather did. Two days later it snowed. School was cancelled and the school program was postponed until the following month. And of course, my first grader was right all along. I was able to do it all.