My phone vibrated angrily.
“WHERE ARE YOU? I’M
SO CONSTIPATED AND IT’S YOUR FATHER’S FAULT. KISS MY GRANDBABIES BEFORE YOU
DROP THEM OFF AT SCHOOL. AND, DON’T FORGET TO DO YOUR KEGELS! HUSBANDS DON’T
LIKE IT LOOSE DOWN THERE. SEE YOU SOON! XOXO”
My fucking mother and her fucking
morning texts! I though. I ground my teeth.
“Stop yelling at
me!” I texted back.
“I’M NOT
YELLING. IT’S THE PHONE!”
My mother always
claimed she wasn’t yelling. She liked to claim she simply didn’t understand how
to unlock the caps lock feature on her keyboard. She loved to say it was her
Luddite brain causing the confusion. The truth was that being tech unsavvy was
simply a front. She was always yelling at everyone. For my mother, yelling was
her way of emphasizing her point.
My mother had
two volumes: silent and screaming. The louder she was, regardless of whether
she was right or wrong, the less likely anyone would disagree. My dear, sweet,
five foot tall mother, Boston daughter Judy Steinwitz, was capable of raising
the decibel level to such a degree that Putin’s dog would hear her from his
house in Russia.
I clenched my
inner lady parts as instructed—heaven forbid my mother let me forget that I had
a baby six months ago and that my vagina was wide enough to drive a Mack truck
through it—as I drove to my mother’s house for our thrice weekly personal
training sessions at her in-home gym, Judy’s version of a push present for
having had a child. Every week, I left my sweet six-month old baby boy at home
with a sitter—he who gifted me with an extra fifty pounds of cellulite from
housing him in my body for forty weeks—so I could sweat it out with my oldie,
Judy.
When I arrived,
I saw our trainer, Boomer’s, signature neon orange and lime green advertisement
on wheels sitting in her driveway. Boomer was a former NFL farm team five
hundredth draft pick who, when his professional football dreams failed to
materialize, decided to take his steroid-assisted physique and reinvent himself
as a personal trainer. I entered the basement, which had been renovated into a
state of the art gym, and gave Judy and Boomer a nod hello. Judy continued to run on her treadmill,
careful not to screw up her pacing. She was preoccupied with looking at her
reflection in the mirrored walls to ensure the incline setting was sufficiently
helping her ass to defy gravity.
“Hi Boomer. I’m on the elliptical today?”
“Yes ma’am. You’re running late, so you’re
going to owe me an extra ten minutes of running.”
I nodded
sheepishly. Boomer was a stickler for punctuality. Show up late, and your date
with whichever form of cardio punishment that awaited you was extended so that
you couldn’t sit down the next day. Asshole!
“SO, WHY ARE YOU SO LATE?” Judy shouted
overtop the blaring AC/DC. Boomer liked to make us work out to classic
seventies rock. He’d head bang along with the booming bass while spotting us
during our workouts. Perfect music to
accompany his ‘roid rage, I thought to myself.
“Delia.” Delia was my newly minted toddler,
a two-year-old hellion in baby Uggs. “She flushed my sports bra down the
toilet. It took me twenty minutes to unclog the toilet and find another one to
wear.”
“I’m glad you did…” my mother offered
breathlessly.
“I know, plumbers cost a fortune,” I
interrupted.
“No, I meant the bra. After two kids, your
breasts hang down so low you don’t need to be working out in the wrong
brassiere. I’ve spent enough on these personal training lessons to fix your
belly and ass. I’m not buying you a boob job,” she heaved, turning purple. The casual observer may be frightened by
Judy’s complexion, fearing she was mere moments away from falling victim to a
massive coronary episode. But, to those in the know, her eggplant hue simply meant
she was hitting her target heart rate. She was still capable of berating me.
“I explained to Delia that toilets are for
poop and pee only. I did my best not to raise my voice, but she laughed at me.
Then, she defied me. After I fished out the fucking bra, she stuck her My Little
Pony into the toilet. She said he wanted to go swimming. I deal with crap like
this fifteen times a day. I don’t have a two year old. I have a tyrant. Maybe
I’m not cut out for parenting.”
My mother stopped running.
“No one is cut out for parenting. We just
do it and fuck up our kids along the way.”
“You seemed to get me to do what you
wanted. For instance, you got me to brush my teeth. How’d you do it?”
“What do you say to Delia to get her to brush her teeth?”
“Judy, did I give you permission to stop?
Push that tush!” Boomer shouted. He was her vocal match made in heaven. My
mother complied. He was the only person she listened to.
“I tell her that she will get cavities if
she doesn’t brush them. I explained that meant that…”
“You tell her this: Delia, honey, if you don’t brush your teeth, they’ll turn brown. And,
do you know what is brown? Shit. And, if your teeth look like shit, your mouth
will smell like shit, too. And, no one will want to play with you. You do
that and she’ll brush her teeth. Kids want playmates. Mark my words, she’ll
listen.”
“That’s horrifying. I’m not speaking to her
like that. It’s bordering on abuse. And, it’s a lie!”
“Honey, parenting doesn’t spell truth. You
want your kids to do what you want, sometimes you’ve got to lie so well that
you’d pass a lie detector test. You need to believe the lies you tell them so
that they will. Kids are built to be both bullshit artists and detectors.”
“What if Delia doesn’t care if her mouth
smells like shit?”
“You tell her she’ll never get another cupcake again. Only her brother will.”
“You’re telling me to add another level of complexity to the already burdened
sibling rivalry that exists between them?”
“What do you think I did with you and your
sister? I’m telling you, you can’t spell parenting without lies,” my mother
laughed.
“Ladies, time for crunches.” We moved to
the floor and lay down. Boomer put on some techno beats to help us keep pace
with the two thousand crunches he expected us to complete in a continuous five-minute
stretch sans respite.
“If all else fails, and she still refuses
to brush her teeth, then you tell her she’ll end up going to the dentist every
day to get a needle to put her to sleep so she can have her teeth brushed.”
“Holy shit, ma, you’re evil. I can’t do that.”
“Do you brush your teeth? Every day twice a
day?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think you do that because you
believed in the importance of oral hygiene from a nubile age? Or, do you think
you do it because I told you that if you didn’t, I’d have your dentist remove
your teeth, which meant you’d never eat another cookie again, until you learned
to brush your teeth yourself?”
My mouth fell agape. I had no memory of
this. I probably blocked it out in order to survive. No wonder I hate going to
the dentist.
“And, it doesn’t stop with teeth. Your kid
refuses to sleep? You tell her that if she doesn’t nap or go to bed at night,
she won’t grow and will always be wearing baby clothes. Fails to listen when
you tell her to clean up? You say the toy fairies will come when she’s asleep
and make them pinch her in her sleep for failing to put them away. Get my
point?”
I mulled over her words. “You’re advocating
bullying my own child like you bullied me.”
My mother’s self-satisfied, smug grin spoke
volumes. “I got you to brush your teeth, though, didn’t I?”
“Is that the point? Get your kid to do what
you want no matter how much damage it causes?”
“Oh, screw you and your sanctimonious high
horse. Fear is a great motivator for kids.”
The music suddenly stopped. Judy continued
to furiously crunch away without a lapse in her momentum.
“Excuse me, ladies. Normally, I don’t say
much of anything during our sessions in regards to your mother-daughter chats.
But, if you follow Judy’s advice, I’ll tell you what parenting does spell:
guilt, with a capital G,” Boomer advised. “I don’t think you’re giving your
daughter good advice.”
Judy sat up and looked at us blankly.
“Parenting has a letter ‘g’ at the end, but
it’s not for ‘guilt.’ It’s for ‘get it done.’ That’s how you spell parenting,”
my mother retorted. “And, that’s how you get abs like mine. So, put the music
back on and start crunching. Fifty pounds don’t lose themselves, do they
honey?”
“Well, there’s also a ‘t’ in ‘parenting.’
And, do you know what it stands for? Therapy.”
© 2019. Naomi Elana Zener. All Rights
Reserved.
