A few years ago we went to an Eagle Scout Court of Honor for a young man in our boys’ scout troop. He hailed from an exceptionally traditional family and in this boy’s address to the gathered crowd, he expressed his thanks to his parents. He told of his gratitude for his father who sacrificed many weeknights and weekends to help lead the various campouts as well as sponsor merit badge classes. He extolled the virtues of his father’s gourmet cooking expertise and the many high adventure trips they had taken together. What did he say to his mother, you might wonder? He thanked her for sewing merit badges on his shirts…and for keeping them ironed.

I remember that moment as if it was yesterday because the feeling of wanting desperately to run amok, scream loudly–or to strangle someone was quite overwhelming. My middle son turned to look at me across the room and because he is the child most like me, he knew this was just the kind of thing that would make my head explode. His eyes pleaded with me not to say anything. And I didn’t…until we got in the car. After a moment of silence I turned to address everyone in the car, including my husband. I said: “If at the end of your scouting career you have been worthy enough to receive the Eagle Scout award and you feel the need to thank me for whatever role I’ve had in it, please feel free. However, if after six years in an organization that has required enormous sacrifices of family time, money and scheduling, if all you can credit me with are the creases in your scout shirts…please don’t bother.”

I still stand by that statement.

A friend who is a lawyer/ mother of four told me once that she didn’t believe that staying home with kids required her to also work as an unpaid maid who had to clean up everyone’s mess as part of her daily schedule. “When I’m dead, I don’t want them to get the wrong idea about why they miss having me around”, she said. “I have to have represented more to them than an afternoon snack, good-smelling bathroom towels and a clean kitchen floor. Maybe in some warped world that’s someone’s idea of a good wife, but it doesn’t make me a good mother.” I agree.

Despite the fact that living by this philosophy means that everyone’s shoes will stick to the subsequently filthy floor in the same way they might at…say…the public health clinic or the floor of a circus tent, I think the goal of getting your kids to see you as a person is worth attaining. God knows I’ve tried.

I started writing for money when our oldest two were babies and by the time the third was born and in pre-school I was free-lancing for three publications. Writing was really the only thing I ever wanted to do with my life and, despite an unfortunate seven-year detour teaching school, I found myself living my fantasy. Yes, I stayed at home with the little ones, but my previously unused brain was finally being utilized as a newspaper writer. I learned a little about myself during that time, too.

I learned that I liked staying home if it meant teaching my kids to read (which I did) or showing them how to make homemade Christmas wrapping paper or going to the museum to learn about dinosaurs. If it meant that I was supposed to shelve my full-time working status in order to bleach the bathtub or dust the furniture…um….not so much.

I learned that sitting down with my kids to make watercolor pictures or showing them how to hit a baseball in the vacant lot next door made me feel like I was accomplishing something. And if I spent their naptimes hammering out an article or doing research on an author…well…that made the day especially productive and it called for champagne. A day of nothing but cleaning house was positively mind-numbing and, even today, if such a thing is followed by one of my sons asking me what I did while he was at school, I don’t feel good about myself at all. What I want to do is to throw myself under a bus.

I also learned that keeping all those plates spinning simultaneously, like the guy on the old Ed Sullivan show, and maintaining the feeling that I had a real purpose on the planet, I had also hoped to illustrate how a true equal partnership in marriage worked, and I actually thought we were doing pretty well in that department. My sons had the benefit of a mom and a dad who shared cooking responsibilities and homework duty. Both of us served on PTA. Bryan remodeled houses, but he also changed diapers, read to his kids at night and volunteered for cafeteria duty at the elementary school where he helped his kids’ friends open their milk cartons and ketchup packets. I sponged out the refrigerator and vacuumed more often, but I also shingled many a roof for Habitat and had a byline in a newspaper.

I thought I was leaving them with a good impression…the BEST impression a parent could make, actually. But after all was said and done I found out in recent years that the kids were TOTALLY flummoxed when they discovered the filing cabinet in my office that contains all of my published work. Mom? A writer?? They never remembered me doing anything of the sort because I usually did it around their schedules while they were sleeping or at school. So much for impressions.

The final blow came this summer when I left home for a week to teach art at a pediatric cancer camp. They got another taste of what it’s like not to have me around for awhile. Sort of like my lawyer friend who wanted her kids to value her for more than the clean house. Oh…my kids missed me alright. They were quite dramatic in their retellings of what it was like when old mom wasn’t around. I was curious and just a little flattered. Was it my sense of humor? Was it the advice I offered or my help with a project? Our mother-son talks? No, it was none of those.

“Thank God you’re home, ” they chimed. “Dad never goes to the grocery store and there was NOTHING IN THE REFRIGERATOR THE WHOLE TIME YOU WERE GONE!!” All I’ve got to say is that if anyone mentions groceries in their Eagle Scout thank you speech, heads are going to roll. Word to your mother.

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