D R A M A_ Q U E E N

This won't hurt a bit! Ever been brought to tears while lying on your back with your legs open in front of a strange doctor? Share your tales of gynecological woe in Drama Queen for a Day contest.

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T A B L E++T A L K

How much money to teens need for clothes? Discuss fashion allowances in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

The mother of all elections
By Lori Leibovich
Can the favorite daughter of the Christian right knock off the feminist senator in tennis shoes?
(10/28/98)

Circumcision in America, Part 2
By Debra S. Ollivier
Despite medical and religious debunking, long-standing cultural biases keep the practice of circumcision alive
(10/27/98)

Circumcision in America
By Debra S. Ollivier
How did a medically pointless procedure become a routine practice performed on a majority of American males?
(10/26/98)

Citizens of the world, turn on your televisions!
By Sallie Tisdale
TV opened up my world. Really
(10/22/98)

Mommy's little accessory
By Dayna Macy
Jo Copeland designed glamorous couture clothes for the rich and famous. But while she was an extraordinary designer, she was a disaster as a mother
(10/21/98)

BROWSE THE WORD BY WORD ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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Salon Columnists

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BY ANNE LAMOTT | I need to put in a quick disclaimer so when I say what I'm about to, you will know that the truest thing in the world is that I love my son literally more than life itself. I would rather be with him, talk to him and watch him grow than anything else on earth. OK?

So: I woke up one recent morning and lay in bed trying to remember if the night before I had actually threatened to have my son's pets put to sleep, or whether I had only insinuated that I would no longer intercede to keep them alive when, due to his neglect, they began starving to death.

I'm pretty sure I only threatened to not intercede. But there have been other nights when I've made worse threats, thrown toys off the deck into the street and slammed the door to his room so hard things fell off his bookshelf. I have screamed at him with such rage for ignoring me that you would have thought he'd tried to set my bed on fire. And the list goes on.

He is an unusually good boy at other people's houses. He is the one the other mothers want to come play with their children. At other people's homes, my child does not suck the energy and air out of the room. He does not do the same annoying thing over and over and over until his friends' parents need to ask him through clenched teeth to stop doing this.

But at our house, he -- comment se dit? -- fucks with me. He can provoke me into a state of something similar to road rage.

I have felt many times over the years that I was capable of hurting him. I have not done this yet. Or at any rate, I have only hurt him a little -- I have spanked him a few times, yanked him and grabbed him too hard. I have managed to stay on this side of the line, but if you've gone over the line and hurt your child, you need to get help, obviously, soon -- and if you don't have the money or anywhere else to turn, please write to me care of Salon and I'll do whatever I can to help you. But for now, we know how you must have felt right before it happened.

When Sam was a colicky baby, it was one thing. I felt free to discuss my terrible Caliban feelings because I was so exhausted and hormonal and without a clue as to how to be a real mother that I believed anyone would understand my feelings. I felt confused, though, that no one tells you when you're pregnant how insane you're going to feel after the baby comes, how pathological, how inept and out of control. Or how, when they get older, you'll still sometimes feel exhausted, hormonal, without a clue. You'll still find your child infuriating. Also -- I am just going to go ahead and blurt this out -- dull.

A few mothers seem happy with their children all the time, as if they're sailing through motherhood, entranced. However, up close and personal, you find that these moms tend to have tiny little unresolved issues: They exercise three hours a day or check their husband's pockets every night looking for motel receipts. Because moms get very mad; and they also get bored. This is a closely guarded secret, as if the myth of maternal bliss is so sacrosanct that we can't even admit these feelings to ourselves. But when you mention these feelings to other mothers, they all say, "Yes, yes!" You ask, "Are you ever mean to your children?" "Yes!" "Do you ever yell so that it scares you?" "Yes, yes!" "Do you ever want to throw yourself down the back stairs because you're so bored with your child that you can hardly see straight?" "Yes, Lord, yes, thank you, thank you ..."

So, let's talk about this.

One reason I think we get so angry mad at our children is because we can. Who else can you talk to like this? Can you imagine hissing at your partner, "You get off the phone NOW! No, NOT in five minutes ..."? Or saying to a friend, "You get over here right this second! And the longer you make me wait, the worse it's going to be for you." Or, while talking to a salesman at Sear's who happens to pick up the ringing phone, grabbing his arm too hard and shouting, "Don't you DARE answer the phone when I'm talking to you."

No, you can't. If regular people saw your secret angry inside self, they'd draw back when they saw you coming. They would see you for what you are -- human, flawed, more nuts than had been hoped -- and they would probably not want to hire or date you. Of course, most people have such bit parts in your life that they're not around to see the whole erratic panoply that is you. Or they actually pay for the privilege of torturing you. But children -- God, attending to all their needs is so exhausting that our blowups may be like working out cramps in our legs. You feel sometimes like male emperor penguins after the eggs are laid, standing there in the cold holding the eggs on their fuzzy feather-warm feet. They have to stand there, because to lay the eggs down on the snow would mean death. And maybe in the deep freeze, emotions don't run so hot, because otherwise, I tell you, I would last about 20 minutes as a penguin.

The tyranny of waking up a sleepy child at 7 a.m. and hassling him to get him clothed and fed in preparation for school means you're chronically tired, resentful and resented. Then, in this condition, while begging him to put on socks, you are inevitably treated to an endless and intricate precis of "Rugrats." It's like having Paulie Shore administer the Chinese water torture.

N E X T_ P A G E: Kids can be like rats