Being a writer and a mom of young children is tough, so having another writer-mom to call friend is fundamental. Tasha is mine, and we critique one another’s work and hold each other accountable to our writing goals. As best as we can, that is. Now back in our groove, she messaged me one morning to remind to write. November is National Novel Writing Month and for years we’ve been trying to finish a novel within the 30 days.
“Should I brush my teeth first?” I joked.
“I’m gonna say brush and shower,” she answered. “Plus coffee,” she added in a second message.
I shower at night and unlike many people I’ve come across, I don’t see the need to shower again in the morning. After brushing my teeth and steaming my face, I crawled back onto my king-sized bed. My husband was lying on his back with his mouth wide open, snoring. I kicked him and told him to roll over. I picked up my phone to send her another message. “I’m going in,” I typed.
“I haven’t started writing yet. I had to straighten up and I’m making pancakes for the girls.”
“You’re such a good mom,” I said.
“A good mom…If putting yourself dead last is being a good mom, then I’m on a roll.”
That sounded like something my mom would have said. In fact, I’m sure she has. Her tone an equal blend of self-pity and pride, she’d often recall how she couldn’t remember the last time she bought something for herself or took time for herself. Monday through Friday, she woke up two hours earlier than she had to so she could iron the family’s clothes and make us breakfast. After seeing us off to school, she headed to work where she’d spend the next eight hours only to come home to cook and clean and complain about having to cook and clean.
That’s half the story at least.
The other half included helping us with homework, damn near doing school projects and papers for us, transporting us to and from extracurricular activities that we never stuck with, and outings with friends. Sometimes picking them up and dropping them way on the other side of town. Then there were my detentions and middle-of-the-day phone calls from school for passing notes and talking back and skipping class.
“Trelani, why?” she’d cry.
I’d shrug my shoulders and offer whatever excuse came to mind first. Even as a pre-teen, I knew that it really didn’t matter whether or not I told the truth. Either way, I’d be put on a punishment for a length of time that never stuck. After catching an in-school suspension one day for forging her signature, she said that I’d be on punishment until the next report card was issued some five or so weeks later. That following Saturday, she forgot all about it. Or so I thought. That Sunday, every sister in the church laid their hands on me to rebuke the spirit of mischief.
Then there was the time I got in big trouble and ended up being sentenced to 90 days in a youth detention center. It was more than 100 miles away from where we lived, yet she was there every single Saturday. I could also count on a letter or a card being in the mail every Wednesday and money being put on my account every Sunday. The guards reminded me often that I was blessed to have such a good mother.
Then there was the time that she asked me to go for a ride with her. We got on the highway and she put this song by Yolanda Adams called “In the Midst of It All” on repeat. For the entire ride, she didn’t say anything at all. I don’t remember exactly what we’d been arguing about beforehand, but before this drive we were giving each other the silent treatment. During the ride that lasted an hour or so, she started crying. I worried that she’d lose it and we’d crash, but we didn’t. When we pulled back into the driveway, before I opened my car door, she told me that she loved me. As I was known to hold a grudge, I didn’t say it back. Later that week, I surprised her and said it.
She woke up in the wee hours, every Saturday morning, to clean. No, really clean. On hands and knees, sweating. You had better not walk across her still-wet floor or throw a dish in her now-empty sink, or plop your ass down in the room she happened to be cleaning.
For the same reason that I run, dance, and do yoga, I think sweeping, mopping, and dusting helps to clear her mind and reclaim her sense of balance.
For example, if my kids interrupt me while I’m sitting crisscross applesauce with my palms up, then they’re likely to get barked at. My mom does the same if you get in her way of cleaning.
But did keeping a clean house and cooking meals every night make a mother a good mother? I would like to think that preparing your children for the world outside of your home is an undertaking of a good mother. Not to say that she wasn’t. But she certainly did not prepare her three children. Now that I’m adult, she often vents to me that my younger sister (24) and brother (17) have no ambition and they do nothing for themselves.
I don’t know if she realizes it, but I’ve stopped responding. I used to remind her that it wasn’t too late to put her foot down with them. I’d suggest that she stop doing their laundry; if they ran out of clothes, then they ran out. Show them once, maybe twice, how to wash clothes and let that be that. Make my sister start at least paying her car insurance and take my brother’s cellphone if he couldn’t get his grades together. She’d agree but never implement.
Why I bothered with it for so long, I have no idea. When in her house, I never had chores. She did them all, and when my stepdad tried convincing her that she was ruining us, she attempted tightening up on us. For a second. Well, maybe two weeks. The chore list was posted on the fridge with a Pizza Hut magnet, and we were to come home from school, do our homework, then our chores.
She’d come home and complain about the dishes not being cleaned to her liking, that we vacuumed but hadn’t swept out the corners or fluffed the pillows or dusted behind the TV. It didn’t take long for her to resume doing everything on her own.
I would have liked to see her enjoy her life, smile more often, and finally finish her master’s degree and the book she started writing back in ’91. Instead, she popped blood pressure pills and defined her life’s purpose in the church.
It seemed the only thing she looked forward to, and ever really put her foot down about, was our bedtime at nine. After we were tucked away, she could finally watch, in peace, the stories that she’d pre-recorded earlier that day. I guess you could say that was her short-term goal. Her long-term goal was us moving out as if her life would magically spring into action the day we were all “grown and gone.”