Give Mom the Gift of Time. Hard Time.

When I think of what I’d like for Mother’s Day, I often come to “My God, a stint in rehab sounds fantastic.” But Betty Ford and Sunset Malibu are really the only ones I’m interested in — Private beach access! Encouragement to walk around the lake every morning! Spa treatments, people! Rehab sounds AWESOME. But I’d have to pawn my child to come close to affording these facilities, and since that would make me NOT a mother, we find ourselves in an unfortunate Catch 22. Also I’m not addicted to anything that’s detrimental to my health. Unless you count Grey’s Anatomy. Sooo, I think the next best option is clear:

For Mother’s Day, I’d like to go to a white-collar, minimum-security prison.

Well of course I specify “white collar.” When you are prescribing a present for yourself, you need to be precise. Otherwise I’m going to end up kickin’ it for a week with a guy called “Issues” in cell block D. And that, my friends, is not a vacation.

In Austria, you can meditate on your private patio. Sign me up!

In a comfy minimum-security facility, you get to go to sleep at regular times and stay all night in your own bed. They cook for you, three times per day! I can read books all morning, or have long discussions about embezzlement. Plus I’d get an hour a day to work out. An HOUR. I will be so buff. At a place in Kentucky I can attend wellness workshops that focus on stress reduction. At other places I can check out an instrument and join an inmate band. Or become a dental assistant! Leatherworking classes sound fun. And think how useful I’ll be after my vacation if I take the vocational programs in baking and landscaping.

Prison sounds great. No more wondering what to wear in the morning. I could get one of those cute soap-on-a-ropes. I wouldn’t be responsible for anyone. Heck, I wouldn’t even be responsible for myself! What mom wouldn’t be thrilled with such a gift?

You might ask, “But Summer, how do I get my mother such a luxurious vacation? After all, one can’t just call a jail and make reservations.” To that I say, why not?! We should be able to call up the justice system and declare ourselves a threat to society. “Hello, correctional facility? If I don’t go to jail to get away from these kids RIGHT NOW, I’m going to commit a crime. Like mail fraud.” If that won’t work, and I’m told it won’t, then you’re going to need to frame mom. But you know what, it’s Mother’s Day–This is your job. I’m not going to plan it all out for you.

Parenting on Maui

We took our kid to Maui. We haven’t been on a true vacation in a long time and we figured in Hawaii we could just bury Sally up to her neck in sand and have dinner and drinks before she worked her way out. Perfect. I prepared us well for the long plane flight, the snorkeling, and the possibility that we would damage peoples’ retinas with our blinding whiteness. I did not prepare us for how many animals would provide “teachable moments” during the trip.

THE HAWK: Yes, hawk. Upon take-off, our plane hit a very large bird. It got sucked into the engine. We made an emergency landing. It actually was not at all scary, but we made the news in at least two states. And, major bonus, Sally got to learn how hawk smells when it’s cooking! Truly, you haven’t lived until you’ve been the parent on the plane answering questions (asked very loudly) about how they’ll get the hawk out of the engine: “Do they just pull really hard, Mom? Is it dead? What about the feathers, can they get those out? Will they use a hose to wash it off?!” [Answer: Apparently they start by plucking parts out and putting it into baggies. We didn't watch after that.]

TOADS: Sally believed the nightly toad appearances outside our condo were pretty cute. Until her mom was the one returning from the laundry room yelling “HOLY mother of …” because she just kicked a cool, slimy guy in the dark with bare feet and freaked herself out.

You will stare at this unmoving turtle and you will express your awe like a woman who has waited 75 years to see such a thing!

SEA TURTLES and WHALES: We saw both. They were awesome. That is, to an adult who realizes what a rarity it is to see these things up close and in their natural habitats. Four year olds? They are not so impressed. “Cool, it’s neat,” she said about the giant sea turtle a mere 10 feet away from us on the beach. And then she ran off and see how much sand she could pack into her swimsuit. After she whined about having to pay attention to the whales, too, I had a nice heart-to-heart scream with her about how unappreciative she was of all these opportunities we give her. And then I realized that I was truly spiritually linked to all parents that have gone before me, because they ALL yelled at their kids for being spoiled ungrateful picky gooey little brats. …It was the ocean and all the relaxing, it really got me in touch with the cosmos…

The MONGOOSE: We almost ran one over. We had to look it up to figure out what it was, because seriously, who really sees mongooses? We learned that it is an invasive, weasel look-a-like species brought to the island to eat rats, but it turns out rats are out at night and the mongoose is out during the day, so instead it has eaten most of the lovely birds on Maui. Basically, it’s a small animal that seemed like a good idea, but then didn’t actually solve any problems, and managed to ruin a lot of the best stuff about life. And I couldn’t help but think, hmmm, why does that sound familiar…

The WILD CAT: The “wild cat” was a seven-pound stray that routinely visited our back door looking for food and scared the KUH-RAP out of Sally because she heard it was “wild.” And therefore might rip her limb from limb, one presumes. One evening after she climbed my leg like it was a coconut tree, screeching in terror at Satan himself—who, if you didn’t know, frequently takes the form of a domestic shorthair—I decided enough was enough. I went outside, squatted down and stuck my arm out. “Look, honey, it’s just a stray cat. It’s probably not used to being pet and that’s why we leave him alone, but it’s probably actually a really nice cat.” At which point, the cat bit my wrist, hard, and then hissed at me in a way that I still think he might actually have been a rabid wolf. So, logically, I screamed, “Never mind, it’s not a nice cat! It’s not a nice cat!” and locked us in the house. Brilliant parenting on all counts.

Now we’re back from paradise. And we’re pretty sad about it. But as long as I don’t start foaming at the mouth, we should be okay.

Even God Got a Day Off

I totally ripped that headline off from another blogger. Sometimes I need to do that–steal stuff, I mean–because I NEVER GET A DAY OFF. If I had, say, Sundays all to myself, I could think of blog topics and witty headlines, dream up new childhood-wrecking discipline techniques, maybe even invent a new main course for dinner. But my only time away from my mom job is when I’m at my work job, where I actually do work; time at the gym, during which all my efforts are spent trying not to strangle myself with my iPod cord while the bouncing death machine works me out; or time at the grocery store, where people ogle bananas and leave their carts all over the aisles and walk too slow and make me want to get a steam roller and flatten their cars in the parking lot because they’re just making my life harder.

Whew. That feels better. So anyway, I end up stealing stuff. Not the bananas or anything. Headlines. Recipes from all the “revolutionize your family’s diet in under 20 minutes” cookbooks. And behavior techniques from SuperNanny, from which I can crib while I fold laundry. That’s me: human aggregate. I have nothing original to contribute. That’s probably why I like being a writer. It’s maybe the only job where you don’t have to know anything. My role is to ask people questions about the original things they do. How awesome is that? My epitaph should read “Here lies Summer Embee: She didn’t know squat.”

One time, in college, I had an original idea. I wrote a paper for a psych class and my professor came to me and said that I should pursue this idea because as far as he knew nobody had ever researched it. He is my favorite college professor because he actually thought I might pull that off.

I didn’t, of course, which is how we ended up here. It’s fine. It’s just a little depressing that now, as a 25/7 mom, my prospects for originality are that much slimmer. I’m working on the perfect spaghetti sauce but it’s not like I invented marinara or anything.

This is not a pity plea. You don’t need to pat my head and tell me my blog is original. I’ll know you’re lying, anyway, because seriously, pick a clause and do a Google search: I’m not the first. Who knows, though. Maybe sometime I’ll get a day off, like when Sally is old enough that I can ship her and Mr. Embee off on a father-daughter trip. Imagine, I might have all kinds of ideas hiding in me, just waiting for a vacation day when I can put aside the constant stream of To Do items and let something original explode out of my brain. If you hear a sonic boom from the East Bay, it might be me.