Your face is going to freeze that way

Sometimes mom’s warnings had the reverse effect. This is one of them.

When you’re mad, aggravated, frustrated, or otherwise full of attitude, you’re hateful contrary, and you’re going to respond to your mom as if she’d just dared you.

Besides, how cool would it be to have your eyes or your face freeze? Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) tried really hard, naturally, but it didn’t work. Oh, the disappointment!

Let’s face facts: Kids can make whatever faces they want, and they won’t leave even the faintest mark. I used to practice frowning to see how deep I could make the crevices between my eyebrows. To my dismay, the lines disappeared without a trace as soon as I relaxed. How in the world would I be taken seriously if I didn’t have some serious frown lines? My first summer of lifeguard duty took care of the whole baby-smooth skin issue, let me tell you.

But you know what? Mom really was on the up and up on this one. Sooner or later your attitude will show up on your face for the whole world to see. Are you a sourpuss? Well, you'll end up with a sour puss. Are you a Cranky McCrankypants? Then you'll wind up viewing life from behind a cranky, creaky, crinkly face. You don’t need to apply the “loser” symbol to your forehead for the world to know you are one: over time, your face will make it all too clear.

Once upon a time I worked with a woman who had a cynical, know-it-all attitude toward everything and everyone. Her face was deeply grooved from her nose clear down to her chin, showing that she spent far too much time showing her disdain. I also knew another woman who spent most of her life in sunny southern California. Her face was a mass of wrinkles; however, those wrinkles were an exquisite representation of her sunny disposition. Laugh  lines fanned out from the corners of her eyes, and the creases that bracketed her mouth, echoed by smaller lines over her cheeks, showed just how much time she spent smiling and laughing. Beautiful!

Does this mean if you’re pissed off you should smile or if you’re happy you should keep a poker face? Nope, I don’t think so. The Botox biz is booming precisely because people are afraid of showing what they feel … that they feel. A smooth face is a bland face. Feel what you feel and show what you feel. Just keep in mind that what you feel, your overall demeanor, will sooner or later make itself evident and your face really will "freeze that way."

Doctor mom

I have found that no kisses can ever compare to “mom” kisses,

because mom kisses can heal anything. You can have a hangnail,

a broken heart, or catatonic schizophrenia;

with moms, one kiss and you’re fine.

f Robert G. Lee

F

rom the day your mom brings you home from the hospital, she’s always on alert for hurts, illness, and anything out of the norm when it comes to your health. Especially with her first child, a mother is an acute observer of everything that goes into, comes out of, and comes in contact with her precious little snowflake.

I’m sure I’m not the only mother to have called the pediatrician because the baby’s poop looked funny or didn’t show up as often as expected. I’ve heard constipation defined as “not having bowel movements as your mother thinks you should.” I don’t know who originally said that, but I’m going to have to agree.

One of my favorite rituals was the way my mother checked for fever.

“I don’t feel good, mom.”

“Oh? Come here and let me check and see if you have a fever.”

I’d walk over to her, most likely slumping and trying to look sick and pitiful. Mom would smooth my bangs over to the side and press her cheek to my forehead while gently holding my face between her hands. For that brief moment I knew I had 100% of my mother’s attention and love. I could feel the warmth of her hands and cheek and could smell her scent. That alone was wonderful medicine. And today I administer the same medicine to my children.

I’ve always thought that the best place to be if I was sick would be wherever my mother was. No, I don’t wish I were a child again. I just like the idea of being the center of my mother’s universe. And the funny thing is, I know that if she could be with me whenever I was sick, she would take care of me as only a mom can.

About 10 days before my wedding, a guy rear-ended my car, totaling it and giving me whiplash. When I called my mother the next day and told her about it, she said—and I swear that this is the truth—“Don’t worry. Your mother is on her way.” And she was, too. She’d had her tickets East for a couple of months by that point. Still, it was wonderful to know that mom was on the job.

No one said life is fair

Life can be so unfair. You’re the better student, but someone else is picked as the star pupil. Your older brother or sister is allowed to stay up later than you are. The last of your favorite cereal just vanished.

“It’s not fair!” you whine to mom.

“No one said life is fair, honey,” is her standard response.

Welcome to the world, honey. You can whine and throw a tantrum, but there’s nothing mom can—or will—do to fix things to your liking. That’s not to say, though, that some won’t try, as in these bona fide examples torn from the headlines ...

• Some super-genius banned the game of tag from an elementary school’s playground because being tagged “it” could be damaging to a child’s self-esteem.
•  A school district suggested that purple is a friendlier color than red for marking papers.
•  Another district suggested replacing the term “failure” with “delayed success.”

Oh, please. Life is not fair, and kids--and some adults, too--need to learn this important lesson.

And guess what? Just because you grabbed the short stick this time doesn’t mean that you won’t grab the brass ring next time.

Just begin at the beginning

Dear Mother:

I’m all right.

Stop worrying about me.

f Egyptian letter, 2,000 B.C.

R

ight from the start, I want to go on record as being one of my mother’s biggest fans. How could I not be when she’s the source of most of this book’s material? And, having learned at the feet of a master, I am able to bring all the wisdom, skill, and je ne sais quoi to parenting my own kids.

If you’ve ever been a kid, you lived what I’m talking about.

If you’re a parent or grandparent, you know what I’m talking about.

If you’re a mother, you are what I’m talking about.

The time has come to view mothers for what they really are: living, breathing human beings. Over the last few years there’s been an outpouring of books and articles about the blessedness of mothers. Oh, how wonderful they are in their saintly devotion to their children. These unsung heroes blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda.

Oh, please.

When you’re a mom, you do what you have to. It means staying calm while your precious child pukes all over you. It means arriving at an event where you’re going to present your new baby only to find that sometime during the drive he’s had a blowout – one that coats him from butt to hair. And after cleaning him up as best you can, you discover that the emergency backup outfit in the diaper bag neither matches nor fits. However, you're made of sturdy stuff, so you squeeze your little bundle o’ love into that outfit and carry your progeny into the party anyway.

Being a mother means hearing “I love you” and “I hate you” from the same little person over the course of the same day -- sometimes within the same hour. It means keeping your cool when your child is bleeding, crying, throwing up, and having a red-faced tantrum, sometimes all at the same time. It means being the object of your child’s love for your—and his—lifetime.

f e

I've really enjoyed working on this book ... so much so that I've kept at it off and on for more years than I care to count. I found so many people who had similar experiences with their moms – and as moms themselves – and heard the same timeless expressions. We cracked each other up as we shared our mothers’ wisdom and sometimes even got into can-you-top-this contests for the most sublimely ridiculous experiences with our own mothers.

I hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I have writing it. I'm hopeful that by blogging this material, rather than keeping it on my hard drive, will keep it fresh (and me productive) in the months to come. "We shall see," as my mom would say. 

If you think I’ve missed a crucial bit of motherly wisdom, please let me know. I imagine there’s enough out there to make this a never-ending project.