Family Daze: Confessions of a Renegade Mom

Every once in awhile, I like to look through the family album and reminisce about all the times I felt that I had hit rock bottom. Now if you are the type of person who is always on time for the carpool, remembers to attend PTA meetings, and balances your checkbook just move along quietly down the page. This column is not for you. If, on the other hand, you are the type of mother who arrives in the school parking lot as the morning bell rings, forgets birthdays, and routinely loses permission slips, read on. You will soon feel a lot better about yourself.

You see, I recently came across a five-year-old photo of my son when he was five years old, and he was at the school picnic. Without his teddy bear. Now, of course, this may not seem like such a bad problem to you, and looking back on it, I probably could have been worrying about anything else. However, that particular day was the annual teddy bear picnic, which means, as you’ve probably figured out, it was the day that every kindergartner gets to bring their favorite teddy bear to school.

Oh, I know what you are thinking. You’ve gone from thinking, "big deal," to "only the worst kind of parent could leave their child bearless." And, believe me, you are absolutely right. But, before you start writing letters and calling the authorities and all that, I want you to know that the minute I realized my mistake I threw myself at my son’s feet and begged for forgiveness.

"Mom, it’s OK," he shrugged. "Stop crying. There were extras."

But let’s face it. Even though everyone was nice about it, even five years later I still feel a twinge of guilt, even though I know exactly what the school teacher was doing: any request for a child to bring something to school is really the teacher’s way of seeing exactly what kind of parent you are. And so for the rest of the year, I was branded as the kind of irresponsible mother who did nothing but lay around the house in pajamas watching daytime talk shows and drinking beer out of a brown paper bag.

But I digress. I don’t need an old photo of my son to make me feel like a bad parent. I could just look at another photo of my kids reading. That reminds me of one of the last times I took them to the library. Everything was going great until we got to the checkout desk and I couldn’t find my card. This meant that my information had to be looked up in the computer. So they punched in our phone number and brought up my entire borrowing history. And, let me tell you, I bet criminals in the federal penitentiary have a cleaner record than me.

First of all, it listed all of the times I requested a new card. Then it said I lost a magazine. On top of that, it showed I owed fines for a book that I had checked out sometime in 1993.

Naturally I didn’t remember any of it, but something told me that the librarian wasn’t going to trust a person like me with any more books until I paid up. So I wrote a check. But then they needed to see my ID, which, as luck would have it, was somewhere at home…possibly marking my place in the missing book. In less than five minutes I went from suburban mother of two, with an A+ credit rating and a good dental plan, to an irresponsible menace to society. I mean, if this type of thing can happen in America, then no one is safe.

Now that I think about it, once I even returned a library movie to the video rental store and a rented video to the library. Now, try explaining THAT.

And all I have to do is turn the page to the Christmas photos and remember when my daughter was seven. My daughter was supposed to make a Christmas paperweight, and we were given the easy task of sending her to class with a rock. I forgot. The look I received from the teacher for the rest of the year…well, it wasn’t pretty. Of course, that look might have been because every time my daughter brought home a permission slip, I forgot to sign it. I’m still finding several-year-old permission slips from under the couch.

But I digress.

The important thing here is that, no matter how bad I look to everyone else, my family has always forgiven me. Time and time again. Which suddenly makes looking through the photo album rather enjoyable.

Meanwhile, I’m reassured that I know one day my life will slow down, and I’ll turn my reputation around. But until then I’m stocking my trunk with spare rocks, empty extra pencils, glue sticks, library cards, copies of permission slips, and, oh yeah, a stuffed bear or two. Just in case.