Mom’s Spaghetti
It's always when I'm standing in line at the grocery store, or worse, enjoying the ambiance at a restaurant. A child starts screaming. I think of my mother, how she would ask the waiter or waitress, "can we be seated somewhere else?". But it wasn't in a polite or inquiring manner. It was said with the utmost contempt for this very uncontrollable act - existing in the world as a child. Despicable, this phenomenon. Her lips would curl, she would sit down with a flourish at our new table, pleased with herself for avoiding what she herself had chosen, a life raising a family.
When I think of if I want children, I think of my teenage years - what came after toddler-hood, when crying in a restaurant was something my mother could, in fact, actually control. She could escort us out of the restaurant or bring us to the bathroom. It was when I was a teenager that she got jealous, told me things through the same gritted teeth I thought was reserved for four year olds throwing spaghetti.
I don't have children. I don't know if I want them. When I think of being a mom, I think of my mom, and only her. People tell me, you won't be like her as a mom. But what do they know? I only see myself with my lips curled back. Worse, having teenage daughters. My only template for such a phenomenon is making digs at them, words that come out and can't be unspoken. Once they are spoken, it's too late, and I would only be able to continue to dig myself into the hole I had made for myself. It's pettiness in its purest form, this kind of reaction to teenagers.
When I was a teenager, my mother made every attempt to resent me. I think she felt threatened by me, by my impending womanhood. As I got older, after I left for college, she lightened up quite a bit. I was no longer under her roof, threatening to be messy, to have needs, to want to be loved openly.
I don't have children. I don't know if I want them. I think of my reaction to a little girl I might one day call my own, writing with lipstick on the wall, my favorite tube of it, a color that Clorox would see and run from. I think of my reaction to a little boy I might one day call my own, yelling in a restaurant, throwing spaghetti. How I might ask for a glass of Pinot Noir and get too involved with it, trust it like a secret. How it could all be so messy, so uncontrollable, a mistake I couldn't take back. Like the words that haunted my teenage years, the ones that couldn't be unsaid.
At the end of the day, I want to be a mother in the restaurant who is tired, but doesn't regret what she had convinced herself she wanted.
She really, really wants it for exactly what it is.