“Nellie, I need you to pick up your room. How many times do I have to ask you?” I firmly request for the third time.
“Mom! I’m doing it! Stop yelling at me!” she (ironically) yells.
“No talking back!” I retort.
She huffs and walks with rigid fists and stiff legs to her bedroom. I can almost see the steam coming out of her ears. She shuts the door a bit too strongly and it is quiet. I assume she is cleaning her room but at this point, I don’t care and am grateful for the silence left in her wake.
After about 20 minutes, she opens the door, a tidy room behind her, and says, “Sorry mommy” as she envelopes me in a sweet hug. The apology is so genuine and melts away any residual anger. I’m a sucker for a good apology. As a mom, I feel like we’re in constant need of an endless supply of apologies. Nobody quite understands how much we need to apologize to our moms for not appreciating all their hard work, except, well, other moms.
This understanding slowly starts right after conception, when we find ourselves feeling nauseous, praying to a porcelain god to make it stop. When our feet swell and our bodies stretch leaving permanent marks of our efforts. That’s when my apologies started.
“Sorry I made you feel this bad mom,” I called and told her at some point in my first trimester. And then the birth: “Sorry I made you pee every time you sneeze mom.”
The baby years brought on an onslaught of vindications: “I’m sorry you never got any sleep. I’m sorry I spit up half my food on you, I’m sorry I peed on you when you changed my diaper. I’m sorry I cried about every slight discomfort I had in my bowels.” The list goes on and on. What’s different now is that my daughter is well aware of her transgressions and is fully capable of righting the wrongs, a major skill we’re working on.
Moms go through a lot and are thanked a little. I don’t think I actually realized that until I became a mom. Until then, most sorries had been lip service in order to just move on with our lives. But when an apology come from a place of complete knowing, it is not just an apology, it is an acceptance of what has been and what is. It’s almost a masochistic kind of penance — it happened to you so now it must happen to me, a complete cycle of karma.
I know my mom likes my apologies, but come on — she’s got to be sitting on the other end of the phone with a smirk on her face thinking, “I told you so.” And man, that must feel so good. She deserves every ounce of schadenfreude, a German phrase that means happiness at hearing about someone’s misfortune. I hope she feels that pleasure because she has completely earned it.
Recently, Nellie had a birthday party during which she was less than grateful. She was snappy and talked back with only a concern for herself. Granted, she was amped up on adrenaline being surrounded by friends and junk food, but the back talk was at an all-time high. After the party, she was content and all smiles, while I was left fuming after playing the role of verbal human punching bag.
We had a talk(s) and I got a conciliatory “sorry,” but was still left with emotional bruising. Then at night, a small miracle happened. She wrote me this brief note titled “Mom, and I quote (misspellings included): My mother is a wonderful person that many people like. But sometimes I don’t apreciate what she does. When ever I do that I let my mom down. I would never want to do anything like that! LOL! because sometimes it hapens. I’ve relized I should just take time to think of what a great mom I have”.
And that’s that. I might frame it or tattoo it somewhere on my body. I really hope I get notes like that every time. But for now, I think I’ll just tell my mom sorry for all of my past transgressions. I won’t hope for her forgiveness because that’s what moms already do — it’s a built-in feature. So call your mom, write her a letter, ask for atonement, because LOL, she’ll love it.
Allison Kegley is a San Rafael resident. IJ readers are invited to share their stories of love, dating, parenting, marriage, friendship and other experiences for our How It Is column, which runs Tuesdays in the Lifestyles section. All stories must not have been published in part or in its entirety previously. Send your stories of no more than 600 words to lifestyles@marinij.com. Please write How It Is in the subject line. The IJ reserves the right to edit them for publication. Please include your full name, address and a daytime phone number.
