Ketchup Is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves (18 page)

My hat’s off to some of you women, because you really couldn’t help that your child went off the deep end so to speak, and got mixed up in some bad stuff… drugs, alcoholism, abusive relationships and the like. You women are just being true selfless Shuggies and trying to save those babies from their parents.
But
, some of you just need to grow a pair and tell your child to come get their kids and give them a copy of the Yellow Pages open to CHILDCARE CENTERS.

It just isn’t right for young parents of this generation to expect their parents to be free daycare centers. It makes me furious! Our parents have worked, slaved and saved to retire and
relax
, not so you can save a buck or two on daycare in order to pay for you and your baby daddy to go to Panama City Beach, Florida, for Spring Break every year.

Grandparents ought to be the ones allowed to spoil your kids. They shouldn’t have to discipline them. If you are doing it right at home, your kids will behave for Nana and Papa. If they’re behaving and I’m not around, I say go ahead and give my kids a Popsicle before dinner. I’m not going to let them do it at
my
house, but they should be able to have fun and break some rules with the grandparents.

Unless you’re a Mimi, there comes a point in every woman’s life when you might need to start asking for fashion advice from someone
younger
than you, (and by younger I mean someone who cannot yet qualify for the AARP.) Momma asked my sister and me years ago to please let her know if she started dressing like an old woman and we solemnly swore that we would.

There’s something to be said for evolving with fashion. Just because you had a great wardrobe in the 80s or 90s does
not
mean you should be wearing those clothes now. Even though they
were
cute, when you hang on to old trends you end up looking… well, old.

My sister and I have only had to call Momma out a few times. Once, when she had on panty hose with open toed shoes and (GASP) no toenail polish! We let her know as gently as possible, if you can see the seams in the toes of your pantyhose, you ought not being wearing them and if you can see your toes, they should look like you’ve been to a salon in the last decade.

My Momma’s got style. The woman knows how to accessorize like Coco Chanel and is one of the rare women in this day and age that has boldly gone gray and refused to color her hair. She’s got a head of salt and pepper hair that would make George Clooney cry. She deserves a standing ovation for that, I think. My own Grandfather went to his grave thinking his wife had never had a gray hair on her head… Lord, have mercy.

The only other fashion faux pas I
almost
had to address with my Momma was the passing of her dear old friend… the Fanny Pack. See, my husband had a work trip in Orlando and I decided this would be a fine time to take our girls to Disney World, even though I had a three-month-old who was still breastfeeding. His company was going to pay for part of the trip so we decided to go. Shuggie offered to either stay home with the baby or go with us. It was easier to take the baby and breastfeed, than to walk around Disney with a breast pump and expressed milk, so we decided everyone would go. Thus began The Quest for a Fanny Pack.

She came to South Carolina the week before we left to help me pack and spend some time with the girls. Every time we walked into a store to buy supplies for the trip she would ask me, “Now, where do you think the fanny packs would be?”

I
wanted
to say, “Probably on aisle 1987…”

But I didn’t… because she’s my Momma. If she wanted a fanny pack, well, I figured the least I could do was help her find one and besides Hulk Hogan has one to match every outfit and surely he doesn’t have those things custom made. I was sure we would find one somewhere.

To my great surprise and Shuggie’s great disappointment, we never found one. I could see her eyes glaze over with Fanny Pack Envy every time we passed someone with one strapped around their waist in the Magic Kingdom. I swore to myself if I found one with mouse ears that made her butt look like Mickey Mouse, I would buy one for her no matter the cost. After scouring the gift shops I came to the conclusion that Hulk Hogan does indeed have his fanny packs custom made, because if The Mouse doesn’t sell them, then who does?

Another thing I’ve noticed recently is the gradual role reversal between my mother and me.
Gone
is the woman who would go from zero to redneck in five seconds flat if she thought you might scratch her hardwood floors. Shuggie claps along while my children tap dance on my hardwood floors.

Where is the “Coaster Nazi” of my youth? On her last visit to my house, my mother attempted to spray my sofa down with Febreeze and clean some of the stained upholstery. I haven’t bothered, because really,
what
is the point when I still have one child who is only half-way potty trained and one who isn’t even eating solid foods yet?

But I digress. Shuggie spent a good hour cleaning spots off of my sofa, which I appreciated since I never would have attempted it myself. Then she went to bed and left a glass of ice water sweating on the arm of the couch she had just cleaned. She left it there all night long, and when we woke up the next morning there was a water spot covering three-fourths of the arm of the sofa. I swear it’s just like having a teenager.

While we were in Disney World, my kids’ very favorite thing to do was going to the hotel’s swimming pool and go down the water slide. Shuggie hopped in the pool with them, while I relaxed in the shade reading Celia Rivenbark, wiping my tears of laughter and fanning my baby’s sweet little face, with the battery-operated fan I had purchased for such occasions.

Shuggie kept getting alarmingly close to the bottom of the slide. She was just trying to get a good view of the top of the slide to see when her babies were coming down so she could catch them. But Lord have mercy, the lifeguard shouted himself hoarse trying to tell her to back away from the slide. Granted, he
was
yelling, “YOUNG LADY! YOUNG LADY! STEP AWAY FROM THE SLIDE!” Which I’m sure would have confused even me, I mean let’s just face it — even I haven’t been called “young lady” in quite some time.

You are probably thinking “Why didn’t he just get up and tell her she was too close to the slide?” That, my friend, is a wonderful question and the answer is quite simple — because he
easily
weighed 350 pounds. Getting up would have required him to get out of his perch in the lifeguard’s chair, which I’m pretty sure involved an intricate system of levers and pulleys that would have shamed the Egyptians.

I was so entertained by my mother’s oblivious rebellion and the lifeguard’s obvious annoyance I had to put my book down so I could focus on the situation as it unfolded in front of me. I noticed several other vacationers doing the same thing.

As my children climbed the back of the slide, Shuggie would inch closer and closer to the slide until she was touching it. The lifeguard would subsequently start yelling, “YOUNG LADY!” until the girls came swooshing down the slide in their green froggy life jackets and safely into their grandmother’s arms. The only break in this cycle was the time it took them to climb the stairs and wait for their turn in line.

My mother had
no
idea he was talking to her and he faced the daunting task of getting out of his chair if he was going to continue to look like the all-powerful Barney Fife of a lifeguard he truly was.

Shuggie finally pushed him too far when she began allowing my two preschoolers to climb on the
obviously
decorative rocks which formed an island in the center of the pool. I unfortunately missed the harness and crane required to get him out of the chair as I was discreetly trying to breastfeed my baby and pay attention to the unfolding drama. I looked up as my baby latched on, just in time to see the man waddling around the edge of the pool making his way to my Momma.

Now you “big-boned” folks don’t get your panties in a wad. I am a nurse and I used to try to guess folks’ weight as they came in to the triage office in the ER, just to keep my mind busy. I would guess in kilograms and pounds then see how close I was when they stepped on the scales. I was never off more than a few
ounces
. So when I say he weighed 350 pounds… he
weighed
350 pounds. (It’s also comforting to know that I have a second career in the carnival industry if this whole writer thing doesn’t work out.)

If you want to be morbidly obese on your own time that is just fine with me. However, if your job requires you to be able to
rescue
someone drowning in a swimming pool, I think a) you should be able to walk with your feet less than three feet apart because your thighs are so big you can’t get them closer together, b) you should look
vaguely
like David Hasselhoff in his Baywatch days, and c) you should actually be able to
swim
; floating, in my humble opinion, is self-serving and while it may save your life, it doesn’t help
me
one little bit.

He finally made his way over to my Momma and told her to get the kids off the rocks and while she was at it, to quit touching the freakin’ slide (I’m paraphrasing here, I was still sitting on my butt in the shade being thoroughly entertained by this whole fiasco, so I couldn’t exactly hear what they were saying.) He had his hands where his hips should’ve been and she was looking at him like, “You are NOT the boss of me…WHAT-EV-ER!” Shuggie was totally clueless he had been yelling at her for the better part of an hour. He, of course, had no idea she hadn’t heard a single word he had said.

I explained the situation to her on our way back to the room and she said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Are you kidding me? That's the most fun I've had at Disney World in my entire life.”

I
’ve spent my entire motherhood trying to convince my children how special they are. Not in an “I’m more important than other kids, center of the universe, everything revolves around me” kind of way, but in a more subtle “God made you special and exactly the way He wanted to” kind of way.

As a child I was covered with freckles and I hated them. I don’t know why. Just a typical woman thing I guess, always wanting what I didn’t have. My oldest daughter Aubrey has the same smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks that I had and they are precious. I tell her often, how much I love her “sprinkles” and that I’m so glad God decided to give them to her.

I never complain (in front of my daughters, anyway) about how my body looks, or how clothes fit or don’t fit. And if they ever catch me standing on the bathroom scale and ask, “What’s that say, Momma?” I always reply, “Just right!”

The media and starving Hollywood starlets will have their influence soon enough and I intend to instill as much confidence and stability in them as I possibly can before that happens. I want them to have healthy body images and scoff at the toothpicks the media tries to put on display as “ideal.”

When my children ask, “Why are we going to the gym AGAIN, Mommy?” I always tell them it’s because I want to be healthy and strong, which is true although losing a few more pounds is usually on the agenda, as well.

I took Aubrey and Emma for a summertime swim with my friend Courtney and her two boys. At the time Sadie was roughly six-months-old and unlike Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna and the rest of those skanks with a six-pack and a six-month-old... I actually looked like I’d had a baby. I was still trying to lose my baby weight. And I knew I would, I'd done it twice before, it just takes me some time and I have to work hard for every single pound. (I'm talking Spin classes, weight training and a diet that would make Bob Greene cry for something fried or chocolate.)

At any rate, we were at the pool and Aubrey was filled with a sudden gush of love and enthusiasm for me. She wrapped her arms around me, hugged me and said, “Do you have a really big belly, Mommy?”

My sweet friend Courtney was like, “Nooooo, Aubrey! She doesn’t!” (She is sweet, but she is also a little bit of a liar.)

I took the opportunity to remind Aubrey that just a few short months ago there was a
person
living in there and it might take a little more time before I looked like I used to.

Aubrey looked at me with concern in her eyes and asked, “Will it ever be little again Mommy?”

Good question. Let’s hope so.

“Yes, baby. That is why Mommy goes to the gym to exercise, to be healthy and help my tummy get smaller.”

A few days later we went to Target to let the girls spend some of the birthday money their grandparents had sent to them. We made an entire morning out of going to the store and deciding on the one perfect toy they both wanted.

In a very shocking turn of events to any mother of daughters, they both decided they had to have
another
Mermaid Skank... er, Mermaid Barbie, to be exact. They were happy as pigs in mud with their purchases and spent a good portion of the day in our indoor swimming pool. (The bathtub, people.)