The Day My Mama Socked It To…

It has been a long, long, long time since my junior high days… decades, in fact. And yet, there is one moment in my junior high experience that remains fresh in my mind: the time my mama, a soft-spoken woman, ripped my biology teacher up one side and down the other.

It’s a Miracle We Made It to Adulthood

Now that I am older, I have come to appreciate the amazing restraint my mom exercised when I and my sisters were children and teenagers. With our rolling eyes and know-it-all comments and all-around pain-in-the-posterior attitudes, it is a miracle that any of us ever made it to adulthood.

And yet, here I am, a mother myself of children with their own eye rolls and smart-aleck responses and P.I.T.A. performances: I swear they will be lucky to make it to next week!

Mediocre Mom

I have a confession to make. I am a mediocre mother. (There…I said it. The truth is out.) No, please don’t try to assure me that I am a stellar parent, worthy of accolades. I am not.

For many years, I have naively believed that I would somehow morph into the supermom of lore—a woman one step from perfection. I struggled with my shortcomings, always lamenting that somehow I was just not good enough. As a long-standing overachiever, ordinary was, well, plain ordinary.