Moms are like little worry factories. We worry all the time and we worry about everything. Me? I worried a crevice in my forehead so deep I had to clean it out with a Q-Tip every night. And then I worried that the baby would fish the Q-Tip out of the trash and eat it.
Ask any mom what her top three worries are and I bet she’ll rattle them off the top of her head without hesitation. Even if she’s 100 and her kids have kids who have their own forehead worry-ditches.
My Top Three were, are, and will always be choking, kidnapping, and the first day of school. If my child choked on the first day of school and then was kidnapped by fake ambulance drivers, my inner Liam Neeson would come bubbling up from my DNA and there would be some hell to pay.
I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. Seriously, I just spent $157 for notebook paper and mechanical pencils for my kids and 3-liters of hand sanitizer for the teacher. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills that I have acquired over a very long career of mothering three children. Not really all that long but it seems long. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. I can sew a Halloween costume while nursing a baby, I know all the words to every Nickelodeon show from 1988 through 1997, and I have an X-acto knife somewhere in my house, probably under the bathroom sink with the glitter and extra shoelaces. If you let my daughter go now that will be the end of it. I will not look for you. I will not pursue you. But if you don’t. I will look for you. I will find you. And I will make you fill out every form she brings home from school today. [Read more…] about A Mom’s Worries, Warts and All