The Good Mother

Question of the day: What is a good mother? I ask this because I am thinking about giving up the quest. Perhaps it is because I feel like the harder I try to say and do all the right Mommy things, I come up short. When is the job of mothering not scrutinized by someone else or your own children? Who gets to decide what good is anyway?

Do our children decide what good is? If so I would think my review would be nowhere near five stars. I most definitely would not get the AAA rating (Ashleigh, Aly & Avery). On any given day I have one, to all of my children feeling like they could do much better with a different version of good old Mom. I have taken up the cause of supporting one daughter through her divorce and quest for independence and another through preparing for college and leaving home and still another that at the moment seems to like me a little bit. At any moment the jig could be up and one of them will yank my good standing based on some miss guided but well intended advice or comment.

I am nowhere near perfect and I recently discovered that perfection is quite illusive and not available to humans in general so my odds of perfection are pretty much zero. I do have to say that I would be happy if at some point if I was at least getting thumbs up from all my girls at the same time. The perfect mother idea is actually pretty annoying and the quest, (which I admit to attempting) leaves you feeling like you have no life of your own and extremely resentful when it goes unappreciated. Perfection at this point should probably just be a quest for good or OK. If you talk to other Mom's, which I fortunately do often, you hear this tale of non perfection woe often. I have to say, I am not recalling any instances where Dad's were clamoring to be the perfect Dad. What do they know that I do not? It does make me the slightest bit jealous that men can go about their lives with the only goal being to take care of them and perhaps find a wife to pick up the slack when they realize they cannot take care of themselves at all. Thinking about it they are essentially looking for someone to replace…you guessed…their mom.

With all of this undocumented and unstudied data to support me, I have come to the conclusion that I no longer give a hoot what perfect or even good mothering is. The fact is I have a little of both in me and I pull out what's available at any given moment, so I really do not care what anyone else deems acceptable as good or perfect. What you see here is a fine specimen of experience blended with a little (or a lot) of winging it. Add to that some empathy and at times annoyance and you have me doing the best I can.

I will not change, I am going to say the wrong thing and sometimes the right thing. I will think about chasing my children with a broom down the street, but will not. I will accept the eye rolling and deep heavy sighs that say "seriously how did I end up with this Mom". I will also willingly accept the comparison to another Mom, because I know from the outside looking in we can all put on a good show, but when the chips are down, we Mom's are all sitting around wondering "What is a good Mother? Today I answer that question with, "You are because you try".