Mother's Day 2019

I’ve probably written about moms and mother’s day several times on this blog before. But I’m in a position in my life now where the topic is striking me in a new way. I’ve been unemployed for over 2 months now, hoping against hope that this one particular place that has the right health insurance hires me. I’m just now trying to get into the groove of unemployment and maybe try to turn it into funemployment! https://www.patreon.com/posts/26795241




I’m not super good at math or money, but I’m noticing that when I’m not MAKING money, our account balance keeps going down. Like a ticking time bomb. And the lower it gets the more desperate I get to do stuff I really really don’t wanna do. So that’s really stressful. Like a candle, burning slowly down.




But there was a time when I was the proverbial candle burning at both ends. And the reason was because of someone who was really really bad at momming. I was married to her, and we had two itty bitty kids. I was in an almost year-long crunch mode at work, and every moment I wasn’t at work I was taking the kids as far away from the house as possible. This meant every weekend I spent about 10 hours walking around the mall with a stroller and toys. Or McDonald’s Play Space, or on the rare occasion when it wasn’t painful to be outside in Ann Arbor Michigan: at the park. Then our company got shut down. All the money disappeared from our bank account. (Turns out she was also really bad at not doing drugs) I moved back to Washington so I could be by my parents. That’s when my hero of a mother saved us all. I couldn’t legally take the kids with me since my wife at the time felt like she could use the kids for government handouts, so I had to trust that she simply couldn’t handle the responsibility of dealing with them full time. Turns out I was right, and my mom got to fly out the Michigan and bring them back to Washington, where she basically cared for them full-time for months while I got a new job, dealt with custody battles, etc.




My point is that I know what it’s like to have massive external stress from the world bearing down on you. And I know what it’s like to have massive internal home-stress bearing down on you. And when you’ve got both, that’s a special kind of hell.




After things settled a bit I found a woman who was foolish enough to marry a guy with two hyper boys that needed mothering. Turns out she’s super good at it. And that meant I could direct my limited energy at excelling at my career and other creative endeavors. And since I was able to do that, I’m in a strange place now where I’m working full time on a project with my mom. One that I only had the emotional and cognitive overhead to start because I found someone to mother my kids.




Maybe this is sounding really patriarchal, as though mom’s are ‘good’ for clearing the way to facilitate the success of dads. That’s not my intention. I’m simply speaking as a witness to the power of what good mothering has accomplished in my life. I want to recognize that the success I’ve had in life is not because I’m super awesome. It’s because of massive amounts of invisible runway that mothers have built for me. Recognition, appreciation and hopefully compensation are what I’d like to give to those mothers. It’s the least I can do.