Times have boy changed!

Ahhh, Mother’s Day. Cue singing birds and sappy music, stupid commercials for cheap, ugly jewelry and overpriced flowers. I hope, if you are a mother, that you enjoyed a wonderful day being honored for all your wonderfulness by your families. But, if you are a mother, it is more likely that you spent the day visiting and/or entertaining all the other mothers in your life. I also hope that you didn’t have to suffer the tradition of being served breakfast in bed.

I put that “tradition” to rest several years ago. I find few things as stress inducing as lying awake in bed, listening to my children trying to make breakfast and work the coffee machine, except listening to them doing it with their father. My sense of hearing is quite astute and I can hear every spill, every bit of grease splattering on the stove, every crumb falling on the floor. For years I would pretend I was still asleep, being the self-sacrificing mother that I am, so not to spoil the “surprise” when they would come through the door with the burnt toast, undercooked bacon, lukewarm coffee and some other high-calorie morsel that I would force myself to eat, regretting every bite as I felt it transforming into another layer of fat on my hips. But the worst part would be when they would then all leave me there, alone, forced to eat in the same place I sleep, trying desperately to keep the crumbs out of my sheets, while they all went back downstairs to whoop it up, making more of a mess and not cleaning up.

But I’m not gonna lie, I yearn for those old days of paper corsages sprayed with room deodorizer, school-made pencil cups, macaroni necklaces, marigolds from the school plant sale that were dead by the time I got them because they spent the better part of a week hidden under a bed, and cards that said things like, “I love my Mom because she likes to go shopping at the mall,” and “I love my Mom because she makes me chicken nuggets every night,” the accompanying drawing depicting me holding shopping bags in one hand and a wine glass in the other. Sure, back then I worried what the teachers thought about a mother that spent so much time shopping that she could only heat up pre-made chicken nuggets for dinner every night, but I got over it.

I thought I had hit the jackpot this year. Charlie’s latest foray into the world of the entrepreneur involves selling gold. If you are impressed, I will remind you that he is still in junior high, without any steady income to invest. I know what you’re thinking: “D. Parker, where is he getting the gold to sell?” Mostly in the park and in the gutters. You’d be surprised how many people lose jewelry…or so he says. Just to be safe, if he’s coming to visit at your house, I’d lock up my jewelry box, you never know. Anyway, his last trip to the “Sell Your Gold Here” store was extremely profitable, and on the day before Mother’s Day. On the drive home, as he marveled over the crisp, newness of his Ben Franklins, I casually suggested that he might spend it on the woman that endured 24 hours of hard labor, and pushed his giant head out of her vagina without an epidural, to bring him into a world where scavenging for garbage could bring easy cash. Since I don’t charge him for room or board, or for the pleasure of doing his laundry, I figured it was a no-brainer.

Of course I figured wrong. When it became obvious that I wasn’t getting a pricey gift from Charles, not even a cheap gift, no pencil cup or dead plant, or flower picked from my own garden, not even a RE-gift that he could have found in the gutter, I realized that I have everything I want anyway, and I would be contented enough just to have him do my chores for the day. Or even one chore. As much as it pained me to continue to step over the pile of laundry in the hallway, ignore the dishes in the sink and the unmade beds, I did, despite the fact that the stress of it resulted in a huge herpes on my lip (well, that coupled with the stress of the rooster that moved in next door to us who only takes a break from his God-given gift of cock-a-doodle-doing between 8:30 and 10 am each morning). All to no avail. Suffice to say, that my usual Sunday chores landed up on my Monday Chore List. And Charles will be riding his bike to the “Sell Your Gold Here” store from now on.

Maybe breakfast in bed wasn’t the worst thing. Maybe next year I could swap out the coffee for a pitcher of bloodies. And stay in my bedroom all day keeping guard over my jewelry box.