We Wuz Robbed

The Imperfect Mom: Candid Confessions of Mothers Living in the Real World
by Therese J. Borchard

The supermom is a suburban legend. At some point, we've all forgotten to pack a lunch, yelled at our kids, or been late to soccer practice. This book is for every mom who has ever gotten angry at being interrupted from a consecutive five hours of sleep, or who has ever hid in the bathroom just to get a few moments of peace.

In this collection of thirty-six original essays, award-winning novelists, famous columnists, and bestselling authors tell it like it is, covering a plethora of confessions to reassure any mother. Gail Belsky writes about the emotional torture that led to the secret circumcision of her son. Andrea Buchanan talks about the pile of dirty laundry that saved her son's life. Muffy Mead-Ferro confesses to her slacker summer, three months without one organized activity. Judith Newman recounts the game of Torpedo that landed her and her twins in the emergency room. Jacquelyn Mitchard shares how she was expelled from the carpool for showing up late one too many times. Together, their stories provide an entertaining, affirming, and sometimes surprising look at the perils and pleasures of motherhood.

Poignant and amusing, The Imperfect Mom is a refreshing look at mistakes we all make in mothering and a consoling and hilarious testimony to parents who don't have it all figured it out.

Caroline Leavitt

It's Christmastime. A shiny bright apple of a day in San Francisco and the three of us-me, my husband, Jeff, and our one-year-old son, Max-are at a concert. Max's in red corduroy overalls and a striped shirt, his hair long and golden as the day ahead of us. The concert's been going on for an hour already and the whole time Max has been contentedly sitting on his father's lap, so enthralled by the music, he seems hypnotized. Already, a woman has come over to compliment us on our well-behaved baby. "What a love!" she coos, chucking Max under the chin. Someone else crouches and snaps his picture. And then Jeff quietly looks at me and says "I have to pee."

We both know what that means. He quietly lifts Max up and sets him on my lap, and startled, Max looks wildly around. Jeff hastens to the bathroom, and almost as if on cue, Max begins to scream.

He wails when I try to rock him. He tries to peel himself off my body when I croon. And when I stand, trying to gently dance with him, he flails his hands. "Is he okay?" the person next to us asks with great concern, and I nod. "Colic," I lie, my mouth quivering. "A little stomach bug." I try to walk with Max, just to get away from all the concerned stares, and then suddenly there's Jeff, who takes Max again, and all the crying stops. We all sit back down, and even if no one is looking at us, I feel as though they are, and I feel as if I've failed, as if I'm some terrible monster of a mother that my own son screams when I try to hold him.

I halfheartedly hand Max a pacifier and he swats it out of my hand. "Fine," I snap. "Do without." Jeff blinks at me. "He's a baby," he says quietly. "You know better."

I did know better. I knew that for the first three months of Max's life, I was critically ill and in a hospital, so all the bonding we were supposed to have just never happened. I knew that for the next three months I was still too sick to hold him, to feed him, to do more than talk to him and that, despite what magazines say, babies can recognize their moms by scent. This particular baby was more likely to recognize his blanket than he was me. The truth was, I didn't really know him. He didn't really know me. And what's more, he didn't seem to like me and I hadn't a clue what to do about it other than to sometimes, to my great shame and bewilderment, not like him back.

I tried but I wasn't always a good mother. I didn't look the part, bloated from the steroids I had to take for my illness, my skin gray, my hair falling out. To bond with him, I began to care for him, changing his diapers when he'd let me, giving him his bottle because I was too sick to breast-feed. One day, I was leaning over him, tickling him with my hair trying to get him to laugh, when a hank of my hair slid off, dusting his belly. Horrified, I grabbed for the hair the same time Max did, and jerked it out of his hand so hard he whimpered, and within minutes, we both were weeping.

Jeff soothed me. My friends soothed me. "Mothering is exhausting," a friend told me. "One day I was so tired, I put Sammy in the laundry hamper and left him there." She quickly added, "But I took him right out. Don't be so hard on yourself." How could I not be?

It was Jeff who pushed us together, who made himself scarce. Max, of course, wasn't happy, which in turn, made me tense. But I was determined. I tried to do all the right things, to read to him, to splash him in his bath, to keep a smile on my face. One day, when I was reading to him, we both fell asleep on the bed together, and when we woke, we were gazing into each other's eyes, and I felt the shock of connection, and then, he lifted his small hand, like a starfish, and laid it against my cheek. He snuggled against me, and though I wasn't sleepy anymore, you couldn't have moved me with a forklift.

The great myth is that mother love comes instantly, as natural as breathing. Oh, maybe it does, for the lucky ones. All I know is, as they say, "We wuz robbed," Max and me. I missed out on the first few months, the plans I had had to read to him, to talk with him, the time I had arranged to be no one's but his. And he missed out, too. He had the adoration of his dad and his grandmothers, and a devoted baby nurse. But he didn't have me. And when we got to have each other, we each found a stranger in our midst. We both had to grapple with a person you get to know, you come to love. You realize you can no more do without them than you can without the oxygen you breathe.

Max is eight now. We spend almost all our time together and I take nothing for granted. I listen to him. I make him laugh. I watch him sleep. And every time he calls for me or seeks me out or takes my hand, I feel undone by my happiness. We're the love of each other's lives and I know the struggle it took to get there; I know what it cost both of us, and maybe that's what makes it all the more sweet.

Copyright © 2006 by Therese J. Borchard.

About the Author

Therese Borchard is the editor of I Like Being Catholic. Therese Borchard has written seventeen books, including Winging It: Meditations of a Young Adult and the acclaimed children's books series The Emerald Bible Collection. She lives in Annapolis, Maryland.