Story #9 How to Become Your Mother (Class Workshop)

Danielle Orner
Story # 9
3/20/07
How to Become Your Mother
Start off by swearing you will never become your mother. Make sure you notice everything that is wrong with her while you are young. Middle school and the preteen years are the best time to do this because you are already angry at the world. Use those hormones now to fuel a my-mother-is-the most- pathetic-human-being-on-the-planet campaign. You will need this chemical energy to overpower all the memories of your mother reading to you before bedtime while your long hair is still wet from the bath and of her making chocolate chip cookies for breakfast just because.
Notice the soft strip of fat that hangs over her jeans when her boxy t-shirt is askew. Notice the glob of black mascara goop clinging to the corner of her eye. Notice the scar stretched across her sagging belly when you accidentally see her naked in the bathroom. Notice the nights that she doesn’t manage to make dinner and has to scrounge through the huge freezer in the garage for something that isn’t covered in freezer burn. Notice how she destroys your social life by giving you the earliest curfew in the neighborhood and not allowing you to shave your legs until you are fourteen.
Tell all your girlfriends at school that you will never be like her. Tell them that you will have a fancy professional job as a magazine editor and still manage to make homemade apple pies from scratch. Tell them that, even though you’re a bit awkward now, when you are a mom you will be prettier than Katy Sharp, the most popular girl in school, and have more outfits than her too. Tell them you will never let yourself go the way your mom has after having five children.
Listen when she tells you that she could have been an actress or a writer. Note that she is just an elementary school teacher. Ignore the surge of excitement and belonging you feel when you walk through the school halls to her classroom. Don’t think about how you would arrange your classroom. You’re not going to be a teacher. You’re going to be a lawyer, a news anchor, an executive, a singer, an actor, a writer, a world traveler. Don’t notice how her students love her. Don’t notice how good she is at dressing up like a colonist and telling stories of the passage to America.
Look away when you notice the beautiful grey blue of her eyes or the light freckles on her cheek. Look away when your father spontaneously embraces her in the kitchen, squeezing her butt when he thinks no one is looking. Don’t be tempted to listen when she reads to your brothers in the living room with her variety of character voices. Ignore the way people smile when they see her. Don’t hear her laugh and easy chatting.
Forget the way she sat beside your hospital bed and called you “Dani” like you were five years old again. Forget the way she quits everything to be by your side.
Whatever you do don’t sneak a read of her journal. The intimate way she speaks to God will scare you. The way she pleads for your life will cloud your view of her as nothing but a dumpy mom.
Move away for college. Threaten to go far away to New York but end up an hour away from home in Los Angeles. Miss her. Long for the joking way she eases all your worries by reminding you how silly you are to worry so much. Long for her to read your stories but be too afraid of what she will think of them. Hear her words coming out of your mouth when you tease and flirt with friends. Remember her advising you to start dating the boy who is turning out to be the man you will marry. Remember how she pushed you to try out for mock trial. See her in the front row of all your college plays. See how beautiful she is. Call her hyperventilating when you have stressed yourself to the point that your fiancé can’t sort you out. Let her calm you down.
Try to get super-prestigious jobs in major metropolises. Fail. Move back to your hometown after marrying and apply to a teaching credential program. Think of publishing and dedicating your first book to her. Think of publishing with her. Celebrate the way you laugh and mingle easily with a group and credit these talents to your mother. Realize that becoming your mother is not the worst thing in the world. Be prepared to repeat process with your daughter.