A New Kind of Mom


by LIVE SCREAMFREE - Date: 2007-06-06 - Word Count: 938 Share This!

This past Christmas, Hal and I got to spend time with some of our favorite people in the world, Owen and Jodi Egerton. Just their names alone are cool, don't you think? Owen is an old college buddy of Hal's. Well, buddy doesn't quite describe Owen. "Pet" might be a better word. Owen used to live in a VW van while he was just out of college and writing his first novel, Marshall Hollenzer is Driving, but I digress.

Owen and Jodi are this amazingly quirky and funny couple who live in Austin, Texas. They met while both working on a comedy improv team and they are ridiculously in love. We spent the weekend with them recently and they reintroduced us to world we had almost forgotten ever really existed. A world full of Jazz clubs and late night pancake stops. Of laughter late in the night and early into the morning. Of philosophical talks over lingering cups of coffee. Real coffee. The kind that holds up your spoon once you stop stirring. The kind that Captain Quackenbush's Café used to make when I was in college at UT-Austin.

Quack's was wonderful. On any given night, at any given time, you could find anything there. Cozy couples lounging in the corner, desperate students poring over notes, wannabe street messiahs hailing the rapture, and one heck of a cup of joe. There was a bookstore of sorts attached to the café where you could borrow books on any subject imaginable and peruse its pages while some local kid casually strummed his guitar on the makeshift stage. It was really something.

I used to live at Quack's. I used to read philosophy. I used to be hungry for knowledge. I used to see live music, even if it was bad. I used to. I used to. Now, my days are filled with attending practices and checking homework. I spend more time in my minivan than I ever thought possible, driving to birthday parties for kids I don't even really know.

Don't get me wrong, I love my life. I have an adoring husband, two beautiful children, and a quaint, brick house with a fenced-in backyard. I live just down the street from a nice shopping center with a Super WalMart where I can go to find anything I could ever want. I can even drive through the Starbucks next door for a Vanilla Latte on the way home. And then it hits me like a dirty load of laundry. I only go to chain restaurants. My subdivision actually has a white picket fence. Adventure is wondering if tonight's CSI episode will be new or a rerun. People actually refer to me as "Hannah's Mom". It is official. I have become one. I am a minivan driving, cell-phone wearing, bland, boring, suburbanite soccer mom. The horror! The horror! When did my battle cry change from, "I am woman hear me roar!" to "I am mother, watch me bore!"?

As Owen and Jodi showed us around the town I used to know, I felt myself tighten. How could these brilliant, strange, curious people find anything interesting in me anymore? I not only enjoy vanilla latte, I AM vanilla latte! It was then that the words of the great poet, Dylan Thomas flashed before my mind.

"Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, Rage against the dying of the light!"

Thomas was right. Even though the end may be inevitable, I must go down fighting. I must resist the tractor beam of suburbia and all of its numbing paraphernalia. I knew then what I must do. I must rise up and boldly call out others just like me.

Oh, yes, there are others. You just have to look in the right places. They lurk in the classics section of Barnes and Noble, carrying a copy of Dr. Phil's latest self-help blather as a decoy in case their daughter's girl-scout leader turns up around the corner. You can see the desperation in their eyes as they try to follow the conversations of other mothers at playgrounds about which preschool program offers the most mental stimulation for their precocious geniuses.

I will form a new kind of mom. Our motto will be,

"They may take away our free-time,
but they will never take our freedom!"

We will not resign ourselves to scrap-booking clubs and Bunko nights as our sole source of sisterhood. We will refuse to throw our full selves into the lives of our children. We, instead, will have lives of our own!

As shocking as it may be at first to the soccer mom legions, we will strive to set them free from the tedious existence that binds them to their babes. Instead of merely settling for repulsive reality TV, we will venture downtown to see real theatre. The ultimate reality shows - live entertainment, art, music, CULTURE!!!!! We will schedule time alone doing only adult activities. During such time, no talk of children's accomplishments or interior decorating feats of strength will be allowed. We will resolve never again to send out those annoyingly chipper Christmas update letters that self-servingly gloat about our harmonious families. We will again experience life as it was meant to be lived. With passion! With vigor! With real coffee!!! Yes, as a sign of sisterhood and solidarity, we will say no to the siren call of Starbucks. We will hunt and we WILL find a coffee shop like Quack's. Owen and Jodi will be so proud. Now, get out of my way...I've got carpool in 10 minutes.

Jenny Runkel is the co-founder of ScreamFree Living and Director of Content. For more information, visit www.screamfree.com

Related Tags: christmas, coffee, motherhood, quackenbush, dylan thomas, surburbia

Hal Runkel, LMFT, is the author of ScreamFree Parenting and founder of ScreamFree Living. For more information, visit www.screamfree.com Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

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