‘Mom!’
At 11:30pm I was woken up – for the second time that night – by my fifteen-year-old son, hollering from the kitchen. The sound of him banging pots around had woken me a few minutes earlier, so I assumed he was making a late-night snack. I rolled over and pulled a pillow over my head. Both my kids were learning how to cook, each making dinner one night a week, and, after showing them the basics, I tried to stay out of it, letting them find their way. They did a great job, so when I heard Jake’s call for help, I assumed he was just being lazy.
‘Mo-om, help,’ he hollered again, louder, but with no real urgency. And then with a note of panic, ‘HELP!’
Nate was in bed next to me, either asleep or pretending to be asleep, so it was me or nothing. Was that smoke I smelled? I threw off the sheets and ran to the kitchen in time to see Jake tossing a lit paper towel onto the counter next to the upright paper towel holder, which went up like a torch. Jake stood frozen, staring at me.
‘Don’t just stand there, do something!’ I shouted.
‘What?’ he asked, not taking his eyes off me.
I did not have time to tell him to figure it out for himself because the kitchen shade was about to catch fire. I grabbed the oven mitts and a pair of tongs, lifted the Molotov cocktail of paper towels into the sink, and doused it with water.
‘What happened?’ I asked, trying to sound nurturing instead of dumbfounded. Apparently. I had not sufficiently covered fire safety in our cooking lessons.
He looked at the floor. ‘I put a raw egg into my ramen and spilled some on my fingers. I was wiping them off with a paper towel too close to the burner and it caught fire.’
Poor kid, I thought. He’s traumatized. He can’t even look me in the eye.
It was then I realized I was completely naked. Yes, I sleep in the nude. Usually this isn’t a problem. When I leave my room, I slip on a robe, and my kids don’t see my naked body. Because that would be embarrassing and possibly inappropriate, depending on your views of nudity. Personally, I never minded my kids seeing me naked – until they hit puberty. Then it started feeling weird. Also, my post-menopausal body had started sliding south by then, and if they were going to have a traumatic memory of me naked to discuss with their therapist, I wanted that seared-in-their-brain image to at least be a flattering one.
I quickly covered my privates with the oven mitts and explained why wiping raw egg off your fingertips with flammable material over an open flame was not a smart idea. Even though I was pretty sure he knew that by then. It seemed like the motherly thing to do.
This is example number one hundred and thirty-one of how motherhood did not wind up looking like I’d imagined it would. When we brought baby Jake home from the hospital, I had visions of sitting in my new green-and-white gingham glider in the nursery, breastfeeding him while singing nursery rhymes. Instead, I breastfed him in front of the TV watching Real Housewives. He was a small eater, so I pumped my leftover milk from a breast pump that made the sound ‘RED RUM’ while it worked, just like from the horror flick, The Shining. RED RUM. RED RUM. To this day I can still hear it.
Phoebe was born twelve months after Jake. I was excited while picking out a double stroller, thinking how cute they would look, and thus how cute I’d look, strolling to the park. Well, three months later Jake could walk, and he never wanted to ride in the stroller again. Determined to get my money’s worth, I continued to push that unwieldy behemoth around for a year.
I had assumed we would while away hours playing at the park, meeting other moms and their little tykes, and eating our lunches on a blanket under a shade tree. Nope. The kids’ park attention span wore out at thirty minutes. (It took longer just to get them out the door.) Phoebe didn’t want to play with anyone but me. And forget eating outside – Jake was terrified of flying insects, no matter how small, calling them all ‘bees’ and whining at a pitch that could crack glass.
The Mom moments that caught my heart were the unexpected ones: When I saw the surprise and delight on their faces eating popsicles for the first time and photographed their purple tongues. When they discovered lotion, chasing each other around the kitchen, shirts off, smearing it all over each other and laughing maniacally. When they surprised me by coming out of their room wearing each other’s clothing – Jake in a dress and hairband and Phoebe in sweat pants and a Giants tee shirt – and talking in each other’s voices.
I thought I’d never cuss in front of my kids. Wrong. I thought I would be super mature and life-lesson-y when they faced troubles. Wrong again. When Phoebe was being tormented by a mean girl, I leaned down, held her little face in my hands and said, ‘That girl is an insecure little bitch who doesn’t deserve your attention.’ Phoebe was eight. Now, Phoebe is starting her senior year of high school. Like many senior girls last week, she wrote ‘SENIORS Class of 2025’ in colorful chalk on the back windshield of the car. I warned her not to have the lettering block her view lest it cause an accident. Two hours later, she hit a pole. I thought I’d get mad at her and give her a lecture, but I was so grateful she was safe that I didn’t even care that she’d knocked the passenger side mirror clean off and dented the door.
And a few days ago, we dropped off Jake at college all the way on the other side of the country in Miami. Whenever I had imagined this moment, I thought I would cry big, heaving sobs when we said our goodbyes, but I didn’t. I was just happy he let me hug him in public.
Mary Stephens is a writer from northern California. Her forthcoming book, UNCORKED: A MEMOIR OF STARTING OVER, will be published in Summer 2025 by Sibylline Press.