tips from a cool mom...

I was a new therapist at an agency where I was to do "parent training" or parenting classes. The girl who was training me introduced me to one of the moms who was "graduating." She encouraged the mom to tell me a story about her daughter. Her daughter had a difficult time separating and so it was hard to get her to go to school. One of our local family court judges had recently been sending mothers of truant children to jail in an effort to get them to take it seriously. Our mom took it very seriously and tried everything from hand delivering her to the front door (and she ran out the back door and walked home) to dragging her to car to drive her to school (the neighbors called the cops and said some lady was trying to kidnap a girl). In frustration, the mom parked outside the local jail and told her daughter, "there are some bad people in there...people who rape and murder. They want to put me in there because you won't go to school." They both sobbed and finally the girl looked at her mother and said, tearfully, "I'll miss you..."'

I was a kid, what did I know...I laughed. I tell you this, on a week, years later, that at least one of my children has been hand delivered to the school and then walked out the back or, when I told another if they missed one more day of school the truant officer was going to put me in jail and been told, "I'll take care of the kids..." Karma.

In my defense, I am separated by several generations from many of my kids...its been many decades since I was one of them and I am not quite as up on the lingo or the culture. Still, I was feeling pretty good when my kids started referring to me as cool. It wasn't until earlier this week that one clued me in that cool stands for "constipated overweight old lady." Sigh...So on this, the eve of Mother's Day Weekend (we moms of 11 children have to take the whole weekend) I remind myself of the night that I closed myself in the basement and sobbed and yelled at God for not giving me a child and how He proceeded to Bless me abundantly. I am the mother of 11 amazingly wonderful individual treasures. While it isn't always easy, it is my life, and I love it. These moments will pass all too quickly and then I may no longer be a nerd (never-ending radical dude ;0)