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Someone should have warned me. I mean it. When I
was like, two or three months pregnant, someone should have taken me
aside and given it to me. They should have let me know that this was one
impending job that I couldn't screw up- that I had better read
EVERYTHING, do ANYTHING I could to make sure I was a great parent; that
I would have fully competent and able bodied children who would handle
any crisis with the appropriate actions. But nooooooo. I had friends take me aside and
warn me that I'd never, no never, get my figure back just quite the way
it was before babies. (Thanks for that, folks). I had other pals tell me
in quiet whispers that the pain I was about to experience would be the
summit of all painkind; that I had never, (even if, say, I had had to
have a limb amputated with a dull butter knife and no antiseptic) EVER
experienced the level of pain I was about to endure. I had one close
chum who said, with a shrug, "Ehhhh. Parenthood is something I
think everyone just needs to experience to understand." Not exactly
glowing praise for the deal, but none the less, closest to the relevant
facts of the job. Even though my body NEVER really did fully
recover, and even though the pain was, well, I'd rather saw off my own
arm than to go through THAT again, those were not the key factors of
being a parent that I really needed to know. I needed to know this: even though my baby would
be quite possibly the most adorable, beautiful, smart and precious
child ever to blink eyes on this ole earth; I needed to steel myself to
his power and make him do a lot of things for himself. I didn't do that. I did EVERYTHING for the
child, especially my first born, EVERYTHING. I mean, when he was like, 8
years old, I was still lugging him around in my arms and dressing him
every morning before school. My husband thought it was ridiculous. "CUT
THE CORD!" He'd bellow. Stung, I'd answer back, "He's too LITTLE to
do it by himself. He NEEDS ME!" "Mom." He knocked on my bedroom door.
"Can you come, uh, help me for a minute." Imagine my delight and horror when instead of a
late night yak session on what girls really want in a boy (a
conversation which has only taken place in my mind), he led me to the
still flowing toilet and shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't know
what to do." "WHY DIDN'T YOU TURN THE WATER OFF AT THE
VALVE?!!!!!" I shrieked,
terrified by this disgusting late night turn of events. "What valve?" He answered. "THIS VALVE!" I bellowed, turning the
valve and stopping the flow. "NOW GET ME A PLUNGER!" "I don't know where one is." He
replied. Of course he didn't. Why should he? Had I
"cut the cord" years ago, as my hubby had suggested, perhaps
by the time he was sixteen he would have plunged out a toilet or two
before. God knows he'd done his share of clogging them up in the past
sixteen years; wasn't it about time he learned how to handle the
situation? So....... it was that at one thirty a.m. I began
a job I should have started about fifteen years prior; teaching my son
to handle things for himself; leading him through the process and having
him (gulp!) actually work for himself at correcting the problem. It
wasn't easy. The mom in me wanted to just send him to the shower and
then on to bed while I cleaned up all the mess and spare him the horror
of the late night disgust-a-thon. But finally, I realized that I'd be
doing no one any favors by that and so I put the kid to work. And you
know, he was actually competent and able to understand my basic commands
and together we cleaned up all that mess and cleared the clog and both
went away much the wiser for the experience. If only someone had just enlightened me on this subject years ago, I could have saved my old back a LOT of wear and tear.
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