Well Kept Secret Revealed

Can you keep a secret? I had to find out the hard way. So, for you women out there who haven’t had children yet, here’s a news flash:
Moms don’t know everything.
Where this myth developed, I have no idea. Look at the first mother, the mother of man-kind: Eve. She’s the one who got her and her husband evicted for stealing fruit from the landlord’s prized tree. Clearly, she didn’t know what “Don’t touch that!” meant.
Somewhere, between Eve and today, a myth evolved that made us think that women who have children know it all. We don’t seem to put this pressure on women who don’t have children. (Maybe they’re smarter than we give them credit for.)
Of course, my mother knows everything. Since giving birth, I wonder if that isn’t necessarily because she’s my mother, but that her smarts came naturally.
Believing that mothers know everything, I just assumed that when I became a Mom I would assume great wisdom, most likely during childbirth. It would be bestowed upon me. I would instantly have the knowledge necessary to raise my son and show him the ways of the world.
If it wasn’t bestowed, then there must be something that the doctors would put in the IV in the maternity ward along with the epidural that would make that happen.
Well, it didn’t happen! I was as clueless when I left the hospital as I was when I went in. The only difference was that my family expected me to know it all, and with the expectation of wisdom comes great responsibility.
Have you noticed that fathers aren’t expected to receive this great wisdom when they are hit with parenthood? That’s because they already know everything—until it comes time to set up the entertainment center.
My first clue that this was indeed a myth should have been all the baby books out there with step by step instructions for child rearing. They even included diagrams. Of course, they all said the opposite of what my mom, who does know everything, said.
So I wasn’t bestowed with wisdom in the maternity ward. Yet, because I am now Mom, everyone thinks that I know it all—except my son! He knows the truth because I have failed every test he has given me, which is embarrassing considering that he doesn’t know how to drive yet.
The tests started in the crib with crying until Mommy picked him up. My mother warned me, “Don’t pick him up. Ignore him. He’s testing you.” If I picked him up, then he won and that put him in control. If I didn’t pick him up and let him cry until he fell asleep at his naptime, then I would have won and became the one in control.
So I didn’t pick him up, and he continued to cry and cry and cry.
What was I supposed to do? Sit there and listen to him cry?
News flashes went off in my head of my son in the clock tower with a rifle saying that he was driven to this because his mommy didn’t care about him. Divorces with him telling the marriage counselor that he couldn’t be intimate with his wife because his mommy withheld her love from him at naptime. Going from job to job and career to career to town to town in search of love in all the wrong places because I refused to give it to him!
He was doomed to become a burden on society, and it would be my fault!
Isn’t Mom the first one they blame when someone fails?
So, I saved my son’s marriage and career and failed his test. I picked him up. His laughter when I took him into my arms had a note of wicked satisfaction. My secret had been revealed to him.
But I have everyone else fooled! In my family, no one knows how to cook and clean and grocery shop and coordinate play dates like Mom. When our party animal son has his friends over, Mommy is the only one clever enough to manage the under-aged mob. At least that is what Daddy claims when he locks himself in the train room not to emerge until the dust settles.
From computers to appliances to VCR’s to DVD players to television to wireless networks to e-mail to cyberspace, Mom is the Motherboard in our household when it comes to technology. In their mind, my knowledge in this area is somehow connected to my parental status. It is because I am Mom. Therefore, I know everything. Therefore, when it is broken, call her first!
When it is lost—Mom knows where to find it! My husband will be in his office, in town, at his desk, and he will call me at the house to ask where his checkbook is—and I will know where it is (usually in my purse).
But, there is that one soul who knows that I don’t know it all. The one whose test I had failed. I see it in the way the corner of his lips will curl when I fail yet another one of his tests. Sometimes I fail just because I am too tired to take them.
Last winter, after a snow storm he claimed a cold on the first day back to school. The roads were still icy and so, rather that send our car down the ski jump to get him to the bus stop, I had let him stay home. Daddy had proclaimed that it was a test and I failed! I heard about my failure on this exam for days.
Last week, my son announced in the morning that he had a stomach ache. The smile on his lips when he made his claim, following it up with, “Can I stay home from school?” with a note of joyful anticipation told me that this was yet another test. I was determined not going to fail this one. So I sent him off to school proud to have passed.
Until day four came. At which point he didn’t wake up with a stomach ache, but I did as the touch of his virus hit me with a double whammy that put me in bed for the full weekend.
“Is this your stomach ache?” I accused him when he brought me a cup of tea.
The grin on his lips was followed by a chuckle that told me that somehow this five foot tall kid who had yet to complete high school had once again outsmarted me. I don’t know how. I’m still trying to figure that out.
I have to take solace in not receiving all this wisdom that I had expected to come with motherhood with this thought:
Okay, maybe I don’t know everything. But I was smart enough to have him for my son and I am smart enough to fail his tests out of a love that only a mother can give.
So I can’t be too dumb.