Mother's Day, Bombeck-Style

Hello all,

It is Mother's Day morning here in Japan.  The sun is shining and  I have a dandy new little Macbook of my very own (Emphasis on NEW. As in I took it out of the box and peeled off the banana-like plastic.  The very first fingerprints on it were mine.  Mine. Mine mine mine.  New new new).

And our cat, Raku, is sitting at my right elbow, folded into a tiny space on my desk next to said new laptop, making sure that either her paws or her nose is touching me at all times.

Upstairs there are sounds of life--doors opening and closing, yawns, mysterious droppings of heavy objects on poorly insulated floors and muffled music drifting around, no doubt from Aya's ipod.

I thought at first I'd wax philosophical about Mother's Day.  But then I realized that someone already did that, and in ways that are far more funny, and far more canny than I ever could.

Erma Bombeck.

I first read one of Erma Bombeck's books when I was about 10 years old--way too young to really understand the why of my giggles.  All I knew was that her words made me laugh.  And that was good enough.

But now that I'm a mother, the funny of her words has another layer.  Because beneath the funny is the true.  Something that I've always believed.  Humor is a gift that wraps the messy and unpleasant and nearly intolerable up in lightness.  And this is a very good thing for a gift to do.

For example:


"Housework can kill you if done right."

Now this, my friends, is an example of humor hiding a message.   People (Not just mothers, not just women. This may be Mother's Day but come on.....) are bombarded with magazine ads and TV commercials and screaming day-glo products in stores all telling us how to make our homes clean and tidy and organized and creative and DIY-perfect.  The floors must be mirrors.  The furniture must be dustless.  The refrigerator must be a Tetris game of Tupperware geometry.  And all the rooms--ALL OF THEM--must be camera-ready at all times.

Bull pucky.

Yes, I believe in keeping a tidy kitchen so that microscopic nastiness doesn't breed.  Yes, I believe toilets require their fair share of scrubbing bubbles.  And yes, I take action when the mold monsters begin to creep around the edges of the tub.

But if I have to choose between meeting a friend for coffee or polishing the floor until I can see myself--well, folks, I fail on this one.  The friend wins.  The family wins over me tilting at the windmills of dust (who am I, after all, to oppress the dust?  If it wants to live on top of my television, I say go for it.)

“No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.”

You know what?  For most of the day I can't even see the beds.  I'm out teaching or at meetings, or downstairs trying to poke more Geometry into Patrick's head or nagging Aya about descriptive essays.  If the beds are unmade....guess what....the beds are unmade.  Meh.


"Worry is like a rocking chair:  it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere."

One of my favorite quotes because it is so adaptable.  We can substitute so many things for the words "rocking chair". For example:  an Xbox game, a treadmill, Facebook, any game on your iphone....the list is endless.

And let's face it:  rocking chairs are great, but after a certain point it just isn't good to keep sitting there and rocking your life away.  At some point you just have to get up.

“Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.” 

This one especially strikes me now that I have a 16 year old son.  Luckily for us (unluckily for him),  he is way too young to be allowed to drive here in Japan.  So I have a bit of a reprieve from the inevitable mind-blowing worry that I would probably be suffering right now if we were back in California and he were behind the wheel of a car.  

I'm not quite as worried about him, you see, as about all the other crazy drivers out there.   THEY are the ones. And I've recently driven back in California, and I've seen  them:  The women driving with one hand while putting on eyeshadow with the other, eyes mostly focused  on one reflected eyeball in the rearview mirror instead of the road.  Business people driving 70 mph with an open laptop on the passenger seat and a cup of Starbucks balanced in the fingers of the hand on the steering wheel.  Anti-signaling lane changers, tailgaters (and I'm not talking about the good BBQ kind of tailgaters either), people who are half asleep, rather tipsy, busy yakking or filled with road rage.  

And into this mess I am NOT eager to add my son.

So yeah, I'm pretty happy we're here right now.  Can you blame me?

“My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?” 

I've already said my two cents worth about housework.  I love this one because it is tangentially related to my approach to bumps and bruises.  

When my kids were young, they would invariably come up to me at some point clutching an arm or a leg, screaming their heads off, tears pouring down their faces.

Most distressingly for them, I had been a teacher quite a while before I became a mother, so I didn't really give them them any of the  "Poorbabtareyouhurtletmegiveyouchocolateandtalktoyouinababyvoice" treatment. 

I looked for signs of consciousness.  (The fact that they were screaming usually tipped me off that they were conscious.)

I looked for blood.  (99% of the time there was little to no blood involved.  And what blood there was usually appeared because while they showed me their injury, they made sure to squeeze the area in a viselike pinch so that at least a drop or two would squeeze out.  You know, to really bring the point home to me that they meant business).  

I looked for anything bumpy, purple, splintered or rashed.  

And barring broken bones, gashes requiring stitches or obvious breakouts of Chicken Pox or Poison Oak pustules, my response was always the same.

Kiss/Hug.
Psychological Band Aid (this is a bandaid applied even if there is no visible mark)
Bag of frozen peas.
Otter pop.

There you go.

“My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.” 


Yes.  Because there are few household chores I dislike more than ironing.  I'd rather clean the toilet.  I'd rather unblock the garbage disposal.  I'd rather clean the litter boxes.

Which is why Bob does the ironing.  Of course.



And so, on this Mother's Day, I encourage you to let the housework sit.  Let the beds stay unmade and the dishes stay unwashed and the refrigerator stay unorganized.  For a little while, just sit in that rocking chair and rock my friends.  Just rock.



Until next time.