Do you remember that Mother Goose poem? I don't even know if anyone reads Mother Goose to their children anymore.
Anyway, the poem goes:
Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go.
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child born on the Sabbath Day,
Is fair and wise and good and gay.
I was born on a Wednesday. As a child I am not sure I would have given this even another moment of thought..you know, like above normal horoscope (Leo), or Chinese horoscrope (Year of the Cock) or Magic 8 Ball predictions of my love life...(Mr. P has one on his phone that I like to ask dirty questions while he is driving...he gets all flumuxed.) But this is something my mother harped on. Anytime I whined, or cried or was sad...I was a Wednesday. I started believing I was doomed in life...I mean if I was full of woe, must be for a good reason, no?
Later in life she also harped that I was too pale and advocated that I get lots and lots of sun, that my hair was "mousy" and I should change the color. I was a bit chunky...but not really now that I look back, I was athletic and 150lbs at 5'4". I wore a size 8 in the 80's before there were even 0's and 2's. I still have body issues.
While is Woeful Wednesday bringing all this up today? I was reading some blogs (who shall remain linkless since this argument was over and done with on Monday and I don't want even two people to rehash the whole thing), and there were comments that as mothers we should be careful what we blog about lest our children find and read the blogs one day and be traumatized that their mother's really didn't love them all that too much.
I got thinking about that. I have ALWAYS teased my kids. I had a song I used to sing, "It is my favorite time of the day....X and Y bedtime, X and Y bedtime", replace X and Y with the kiddos names...you get the gist. If that is all they remember about their childhood, then yup I am doomed to the crappy mom hall of fame. But here is the thing. It isn't what you say, it is the intent with which you say it. I was always smiling and laughing when I sang that song...if there was a bad jive to the evening, the song never came out.
I have always talked about how much I really don't like children...and if you ask my kids...they say, "Yup, she doesn't like kids...except us." And now my nephew has joined that elite group of kids that I love. A lot. I was not a SAHM, I joined the PTA but never went to a meeting, I didn't cook from scratch for the potlucks, we brought buckets of chicken (which were always the first to go, by the way), I went to lots of their stuff (track meets, plays, softball games), but I missed some too (always with advance notice), I helped with spelling, but not projects.
Could I have been a better mother? Oh, hell yeah, and I try
every day some days to get better. And when the day comes that the kids read this blog and I have written about how horribly behaved they were during preschool (kid in college, kid in highschool was a chatter in elementary school), or I let them cry in their crib for 10 minutes (both), or I thought their hair in the 8th grade was not the best style for their face (both), all it will do is confirm what they already knew. Wow, Mom is a bitch.
But will it make them think, even for the tiniest of seconds that I didn't want to be their Mom? That I don't love them so much? Nope.
It is all about your tone and whether your kids BELIEVE you when you tease them. My kids don't. I did. That's the difference.
