Left to Mother’s Day being all about me, I wouldn’t bother celebrating the holiday. Sure, I’ve been a Mom for over twenty years, but I’ve never thought a big deal needed to be made out of that. Parenthood was a snap decision that my husband and I made after a decade of whiteboarding the pros and cons; yes, I’m not kidding, actual whiteboards were involved at points in the planning process before we just accepted that the math was too squishy and what-the-helled it.
We’ve had a fair number of What Were You Thinking moments since, some of them where professionals actually asked that question, but, hey, our kid is fantastic. I understand that my late mother had a close and warm relationship with him, one that my mentioning to my mother-in-law would never cause her to demonstrate that her grandson inherited her smirk.1
Frankly due to the fact that my mother-in-law would (and did!) ask what special thing we did to celebrate me on Mother’s Day, I came up with the (brilliant, right?) idea to Do Absolutely Nothing. I planned to wear pyjamas all day, go nowhere, eat junk food, and spend the day reading and playing video games, just like the Feral Girl I used to be in my twenties, and frankly, a fair bit of my early-to-mid thirties.
For a couple of my Feral Girl years, I worked for the science education center at the University of Missouri. It was not at all remotely the best paying job I’ve ever had, but I loved it, and all of the weirdities that happened while I was there were great experience for working in tech. 3 AM system alarms going off? Not a problem. I can deal with that mess from the comfort of my own home, rather than having to hike into the office!2
One of the weirdities was (paraphrased) “Shai, we need a coach to handle the Amphibian and Reptiles events in this year’s Science Olympiad. Let’s get you a crash course in snake handling!”
So, that happened back then.
Yesterday, the universe heard me saying “I want Mother’s Day to be Feral Girl Day!”.
The snake is fine.
The dog is fine.
The sunroom is still a wreck where I had to do some aggressive and rapid but also slow and quiet furniture rearrangement in order to coax the snake into an empty telescope bag.3
The snake did not go into the bag.
The snake did seem to enjoy riding on the bag while I pushed it across the floor and out the door onto the deck, or maybe it was just terrified of the way I was whispering “WHEEEEEEE, MOTHERF–!” through gritted teeth.
My husband is fine. He did not bust out laughing until after the snake was out of the house, and he did insist on making me a steak dinner with actual vegetables so I wouldn’t be a physical wreck today.
It is a little mentally wrecking that I can’t even plan to go feral without something going b–.
I’m not even going to say the name of that flying mammal. Am not. Just am not. We have them, they are outside and they Should Stay Outside because this is not anywhere near that one and only time at church camp, nope, nope, nope, just because I Have Had That Experience Does Not Mean I Want To Experience It Again.
For the record, we haven’t told my mother-in-law about the snake. This is out of love, because we don’t want her to decide that she needs to keep at least a time zone between us.
- Yeah, I’m lying. Mom never wanted me to have kids. Reasons for this varied over my childless years, often with the phase of the moon, but the general theme was that I “had too much potential”, and occasionally those words didn’t sound like they were euphemisms. This wasn’t all of why I tried to maintain a time zone between us after I had my son, though his Dad and my both having potential did help make that easier. ↩︎
- It wasn’t much of a hike, since I lived off campus just past the parking garage I would have had to use if I drove into the office (so I didn’t drive much at all). Fun fact: in olden days, drunk college students used to get so freaked out by the sight of a barefoot, pissed off half-awake woman wearing a long flannel nightgown and carrying a plush pig and a ring of keys that they steered clear. I couldn’t pull that off these days without winding up on social media. ↩︎
- We have a telescope in the sunroom. It has a carrying bag in case we want to take it somewhere. The bag was the only other container I could get my hands on without leaving the room: the snake was too scared of the bucket my husband brought me while I was keeping the dog away from the snake and the snake away from the rest of the house. Could he have found something else? Sure! But he didn’t need to, because he’d also brought me a stick! The stick was super useful, and I have already admitted Once Again that I am Wrong and Sorry about Questioning His Perfectly Logical Reason for Keeping a Stick in one of the downstairs closets, Because Sometimes One Just Needs A Stick. ↩︎
Modus Dementi 