The (Un)kindness of Strangers

I’m sick. Dizzy-head, molten throat, pinched sinuses, kind of sick. Sophia and I have been over at Nan’s house, playing outside for 2½ hours and, being coldblooded, I’m nearly frozen through to boot. Sophia, too, is in fine form. She’s crying, first that her fourteen Mardi Gras necklaces are tangled, then that her be-loved Snakie-Pie has fallen on the car floor, out of her reach. Tears and snots are flowing freely.

If I don’t get cold medicine, I am going to die. Just a little Phenylephrine HCl and I’ll be able to make it through dinner. We drive from Nan’s house to the pharmacy. I scoop Sophia out of the backseat, who protests as she clutches her knotted mass of bling, “My necklaces! My necklaces!”
“Necklaces stay in the car,” I say wearily, “they’ll wait for you until you get back.” She drops the necklaces, and I carry her into the pharmacy. Once inside I set her on the floor and she makes a break for the Seasonal Items isle. Her hands are a blur, pulling items off the shelf, discarding some and clinging to others. I semi-patiently pick them up, replace them on their shelves, pry the others from her cleptomaniacal clutches, and usher her over to the Cold Remedies section. As I’m searching for the right mix of OTC poison to hold my symptoms at bay, Sophia grabs hold of some ruby-red Cloraseptic spray and declares, “My Drink!”

“No Sophia! Not for you!”

“For Daddy! For Daddy!” She cries as I wrestle it away and set it back on the shelf.

I’m begging now, “Please Sophia. Please let mommy get the two things she needs and I’ll take you home.”

But Sophia is not in a generous mood. She takes off down the isle and hops onto a plush rocking horse. (Now CVS is selling rocking horses? What new parental torments will they think of next?) “MY HORSEY!” Sophia cries, as I lift her off. “You have a motorcycle to ride on, back at Grandma and Grandpa’s,” I remind her. I grab some oatmeal off the shelves and give it to her to carry. This distracts her for about 8 seconds, before she rolls the oatmeal down the Greeting Card isle, and attacks the shelves of birthday wishes. “READ A BOOKY!” She exclaims, grabbing a sparkly one.

“We’re not buying cards for anyone right now,” I say, an edge forming in my disappearing voice. At this, she throws herself down on the floor and sobs at the injustice of it all.

I’m done.

I hoist her into my arms. She is a feral beast, bucking, twisting, and screaming at the top of her little lungs, “Put me down on the floor mommy. I WANT TO GO DOWN. I WANT TO GO DOWN!!!!”

I join the checkout in front, forgoing the really good stuff that I want and need—the Sudafed they sell behind the counter of the pharmacy—because I’m done.

There are four people ahead of me on line. Sophia continues to scream and fight. I must look as exasperated as I feel. One would think that these folks would take pity on me, and let me go ahead. One would think that they’d want me and my screaming child out of CVS as soon as possible. But no, they avoid my eyes and silently wait their turn as Sophie continues her tirade.

I think for a moment of asking for the favor of going ahead of them. But I am too proud to ask for help. Instead, they become the target of my frustration. I quickly decide that I hate them. How could they be ignoring me? What could possibly be going through their minds right now?

Schadenfreude: (Smirking) I remember those days. Her turn now.

Judgment: (Shaking head) What kind of mother drags her poor, tired child out into the cold at dinnertime?

Disgust: (Frowning) Why doesn’t she just pop a binky in that brat’s mouth and be done with it? (

Absolutely Nothing: (Singung along with the muzak) Hey now, hey now, don’t dream it’s over. Hey now, hey now, when the world comes in…I love this song! I wonder who sings it…

I cough, hard, and envision my germs taking wing and landing on each of these unkind strangers. A pox on all of you!

In this moment, I am angry, but I also feel terribly alone.

Mommy takes care of the boo-boos, the boom booms, and the ut ohs. But when mommy’s sick, who takes care of mommy?

Good Enough Mothers

Sophie has her first cold and remains the most pleasant creature on Earth. Snot forms two transparent trails down to her smile. She coughs like an old man and then grins toothlessly like one. Only when I try to squirt saline solution up her nasal passages does she complain and arch her back, which of course makes it worse because I wind up poking her nose with it, or squirting her in the face, validating her protest.

It’s hard to know what to do with a sick baby. I took her out for a walk the other day (it was in the 70’s and gorgeous out). Every time she coughed, I said loudly, “oh, you poor thing, I’ve got to get you home,” even though I had just left the house and had no intention of going home. The disapproval of others is oppressive and can wring the pleasure out of our ventures outdoors (“Shouldn’t she be wearing a hat?” “Do you have a blanket for her?” “You poor thing, are you sick?”) I wish I didn’t care what other people think. But I do. I want people to think I’m a good mother.

Every mother I know worries about being a good mother. We call each other up with our bad mother stories, looking for reassurance or perhaps a story of how our friend is an even worse mother. My friend Emily is a wonderful mother. Let me preface this story by saying that. She is one of the least anxious mothers I know. Before I had a child, I secretly thought that I wanted to be just like her—comfortably bringing the baby with her wherever she went, not getting frazzled when the baby cried, nursing the baby wherever, whenever—even through the searing pain of mastitis. Last week Emily called me in tears. Her one-year-old Sophie (she has a Sophie too—but that’s another story), locked herself in the bedroom and was screaming. Emily had already called the locksmith and had tried soothing Sophie through the door, but that only made the baby scream louder. Why was mommy talking to her, but not coming in to get her? Emily had needed someone to talk to—someone to distract her from Sophie’s cries—until the locksmith arrived. He came shortly into our conversation and rescued the half-naked Sophie, who had ripped off her socks and pants in despair.

It was the kind of thing that could happen to any of us. It did, in fact, happen to my mother, which is what I told Emily on the phone. When I was about three, and my sister was fairly new-born, I locked the two of us in the bathroom. The only difference was that I wanted to kill my sister, who had mysteriously arrived on the scene, interrupting my blissful only-childhood with her colicky cries. My mother was terrified that I going to try to drown her. She got the neighbor to come and rip the door down. (This neighbor was frequently called upon to help with such domestic emergencies, once killing a garden snake on the front steps with a spade after I had innocently told my mother, “Mommy, come look at my snake.”)

My therapist reminds me that it’s not about being a good mother, but a good-enough mother. She’s got resources you can’t imagine, he said. But what Winnecott (the psychologist who coined the term and wrote about the concept of the good enough mother) meant by good enough wasn’t “passable” or “semi-competent” mom. A good enough mother is one who doesn't try to satisfy every need of her child. Rather, the good enough mother allows her child to experience frustration and disappointment and to learn from it in a graduated sort of way. The concept is not a pass for our daily blunders. Still, its reassuring to know that it’s ultimately okay. That pain is part of living. That everyone eventually must get sick. And somehow, most of the time, we recover.