As parents, we always hope to pass down some of our interests to our children. For me, that’s a love of books.  I was always the kid staying up late with the flashlight at night because just HAD to find out what happened in her new Baby-Sitters Club book. I watched Reading Rainbow religiously, and went straight to the bookstore after it was over to find the recommended tomes.

This love has stayed with me throughout the years, translating into becoming a writer myself and a still-avid reader. Books aren’t just a hobby, they’re an obsession.

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 As the work-at-home mom type person, I have become quite the hostess. Granted, not for cocktail parties, holiday dinners, or any gathering involving guests over the age of ten. No, my area of expertise is play dates.

 Play dates and sleepovers at our house tend to follow the same loose pattern. I pick up as many children after school as our mini-van can hold. Note to designers: there is nothing “mini” about a vehicle that easily seats seven easily. A real “mini” treat for mom would be something in the two-seater, possibly convertible category. THAT is a car a mom could have some fun in. But I digress. 

Starved. We then proceed to our home where the van will disgorge a clamoring herd of starving children onto the lawn. They will proceed in an orderly fashion into the house – just kidding. That was a good one. They will proceed into the house like a chaotic gaggle of puppies gamboling and tripping over each other, finally coming to rest en masse in front of our refrigerator.  

Being the savvy and oh-so-together type mom that I am, I have of course stocked our refrigerator in anticipation of this play date. There the children will find a plethora of healthy fruits and vegetables, perhaps some yogurt, to choose from. 

Ha. Another funny. But that WOULD be a good idea wouldn’t it?

Less. No, I’d rather take the road less traveled. That’s the road where the children try desperately to cobble together some nourishment from a half-sleeve of saltines and the quarter cup of sugar frosted something or other left in the bottom of the cereal box.  

With this they also get water. Hey, I’m not cruel. 

I then tell the children to go somewhere, anywhere, but in my kitchen. They can go to the bedrooms, playroom, or even outside. We have a lovely creek just perfect for falling in, tall trees to become stuck in, sharp sticks to run with, and a trampoline for all those craving some ER adventure.  

As you can imagine, our house is QUITE in demand socially. 

Now, there is always that one Mom who is the play date Master. When you pick up your kid at her house she tells you;

“Oh, they had a great time. First we drafted a proposal for the UN peace accord, then just a few arts and crafts where the girls made a water treatment test plant out of recycled foam cups, and then – this is so cute – the girls put together a little musical sketch while I whipped together some homemade costumes to help them along.”

After I host a play date, I inform the play date guest parents thus;

“Oh, the kids had a great time. At least it sounded like they did. I was in my office with the door closed trying to write more articles about what a stellar parent I am and listening to Van Morrison. From what I could hear they did a lot of jumping around outside for a while which ended, as I predicted, with someone crying. So then they watched TV in the playroom. I think they put in a DVD which may have been educational but could have been an old Jane Fonda workout video for all I know. Then, when that was over, they went outside to run in circles and chase each other with sticks again. Oh, and they ate saltine crackers and doughnuts.”

You would think I would be hopelessly unpopular as a social pariah play date mom but curiously; I’m quite in demand.

Space. I think it’s because rather than hover over the children micro-managing their every move and trying to force feed them carrot sticks, I give them what children of a certain age really crave: space. 

Well space, and jumping with sharp pointy sticks.

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Throughout my illustrious career as a writer (go ahead and laugh now), I have been approached by many aspiring columnists/bloggers who wish to know how one actually lands a gig getting paid to give their opinions. You’ve got to admit it’s a pretty sweet deal. With the economy doing a swan-dive and so many mommies growing desperate to earn an income while at home with their children, the question has grown increasingly common.

Exactly how does one parlay parenting into a paying gig? Could you, too, land a low-paying but high-profile job easily performed from home in your bathrobe?

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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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