Because

Anatomy of an Epic Mom Fail

“How could a decent mother forget to pick up her son?” 

Maybe it was the receptionist who asked, the young and wrinkle-free one who works at the front desk, who punched your husband’s number instead of yours into the phone (why???), who doesn’t have kids yet but knows all about how she will be a Perfect Mother. 

Maybe it was the teacher who asked, the one who waited with him for forty minutes in the emptying parking lot as dusky shadows fell over the school, who had every right to be angry because she’s underpaid and underappreciated, and it was cutting into her the brief time between when she would leave the school then eat and sleep and come back and do it all again. 

Maybe it’s your husband who asked, the one who had to face the teacher and apologize on your behalf, the one who makes sure he’s not just on time but half an hour early to everything.

Probably, though, it was you asking yourself, weighing everything you actually did on this particular day against your one enormous failure. As if on trial, your mind tries to explain.

Because that morning, after you woke up, you made breakfasts, the kids’ favorite. You made lunches, nut-free, not because your own kids have allergies (peanut butter is its own food group in your home). Because you like to think that you’re not only a Decent Mother but maybe even a Good Person, the kind who cares not just for her own kids but the kids around them too. 

Because you kept saying, “Time to go, get your shoes on,” and you got to the bus stop with your youngest just as the bus was sighing to a stop. You made it, but barely. Then you went home and sat at the dining room table with a worksheet your high schooler didn’t understand, trying to explain the difference between direct and indirect objects. You thought she might have confused the object of a preposition with these, but in your pre-caffeinated state it was all pretty fuzzy, so you did a Google search for a quick refresher. 

[“Why were you doing this in the twenty minutes before the high schooler went out the door?” the judge in your imaginary courtroom asks—a fair question. You look down at your hands, ashamed, and sigh before explaining.

Because the night before, you sat on the couch with her. You watched some tears fall and felt that familiar rending in your chest. You listened and tried to find the right soothing words, wild flailing attempts to heal her ache, and she finally dried her tears and asked, “Could you help me with my homework now?” By that time, though, you could barely keep your eyes open, and you begged her to let you look at it in the morning, when your mind would be “fresher.” But the truth is, mornings are hard too.

The judge nods for you to continue.] 

Because while you were trying to explain grammar and remind your son to turn in something when he gets to school (he’s been forgetting), your daughter in college called from the States. “Are you listening?” she asked at one point. And you were listening, but also reading about objects of the preposition and (thanks to a couple sips of strong Irish Breakfast tea) you realized you were right. You tried to download this information from your brain to your high schooler’s with lightning speed, as if the fate of the free world depended on it.

She snapped, “I can’t change it now!” and you tried to explain that it really was quite simple. Your son was about to leave, and you called after him to remember his lunchbox and water bottle. Then your firstborn called too, from her grad school, and you wanted to talk because you haven’t for a few days, but instead you texted, “Total chaos rn, call back in 5 mins?”

Because then in a blur, the son promised he had both the lunchbox and the water bottle AND the paper he was supposed to turn in. The college-age daughter hung up and the high schooler snatched the worksheet out of your hand and said, “I have to go!!!” And with one final slam of the front door, the house was suddenly dead quiet. You remembered you needed to call your oldest back. But then it just rang and she texted a few minutes later, “Sorry, can’t talk. At work now.” 

In the ensuing silence, you picked up a pen and paper, wrote sentences with arrows and “Direct Object,” “Indirect Object,” “Preposition,” and “Object of the Preposition,” snapped a picture and texted it to your daughter who was still on the bus to school. And she asked, “Why does it even matter? When am I going to use this?” and the only answer you, a writer, could think of, was, “When you’re helping your high schooler.” 

Then you read some articles, worked out, talked to the college-age daughter again when she called back, and started writing. Because you’re writing a book, a story that has been brewing in your heart for some thirty years now. And ironically, the part you wrote was about a time someone told you what a failure, a let-down, you were, and his words left you shattered. When you typed them, you told yourself he was wrong, you weren’t any of that after all. 

But maybe you were actually wrong.

Because when you met your youngest daughter’s bus, you picked up acorns on the way home and played a simple game with her of rolling them down the hill near your house, seeing whose went the furthest. You relished the seven-year-old trash talk and her laughter floating on the breeze that danced in her curls.

Because the bottom line is, your son’s choir practice did not enter your brain one single time that entire day. Not when you ran errands, not when you bought gas (which you remembered to do before it was on empty!), not even when you ran into your neighbor who is your son’s homeroom teacher and had a conversation about him for a good fifteen minutes. Yes, you did wonder where he was when you found he wasn’t home but actually thought he was at a friend’s, and you were thankful because he can safely do that where you live.

 Because you don’t have a cell phone for him yet, and you didn’t (but obviously should have!) set a reminder alert on your phone. 

Because he’d only had one practice before this, so picking him up hadn’t become a habit yet. 

Because, because, because…

The judge in your imagined courtrooms bangs her gavel. “It all sounds like you’re trying to make excuses,” she snaps, “when you just plain failed.” And the tears of shame fall.

The door opens, and you hear your son come in with his father. 

“Hey, Mom!” he calls, and you wipe your eyes quickly, stirring dinner. He walks to the stove, next to you. He doesn’t even have to stand on tiptoe any more as he kisses your cheek.

“Hey, buddy, how was your day?” you ask and before he can answer, you say, “I’m so, so, SO sorry I forgot to pick you up. I feel terrible. Really terrible.” He says lightly, “It’s okay!” and proceeds to tell you about his day. 

You think of all the things he’s done that left you exasperated and what you’ve said about it. “How could you forget to turn in that assignment? How could you forget to do your homework?” And here he is, after forty minutes in a parking lot with an annoyed teacher, doling out heaps of mercy. 

Maybe you aren’t actually a Decent Mother after all.

Because the question was rhetorical anyway. 

Because you don’t need a courtroom or a judge to feel deeply ashamed. 

Because “Failures speak louder than efforts” seems to be the ruling axiom. 

Because you’ll wake up in the middle of the night and assume that teacher hates you right now. And right then, in the dark, you’ll kind of hate yourself too. As you lie awake, sure that you won’t be getting back to sleep even though your alarm won’t go off for two more hours, you’ll pray desperately, Please, God, tell me again. Tell me again I’m more than this mistake. Tell me again that I’m loved. 

And somehow, when you least expect it, the impossible will happen and you’ll fall back into a deep, sweet sleep. 

In the morning, you’ll hear that judge’s voice asking again, “How could a decent mother forget to pick up her son?” And you’ll answer, “Because this is so much more than I could ever have dreamed of, and I love all of it. But sometimes, somehow, despite my best efforts, I just mess up. I drop the glass balls instead of the rubber ones. Because even though I want to be perfect, maybe I need these reminders that I never will be. Because recognizing my own mistakes and failures breaks open my heart to pour grace out to those around me.”

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "A Question".