Confession time: The whole mean mommy thing? I stole the idea. Stole. It.

But it’s okay, because I stole it from my mother, the Original Mean Mommy:

When you've been a Mean Mom with your own kids, you get to be a Fun Grandma. Here she is blowing bubbles with James.

I think I may have written this in my first-ever post on this blog, but it’s an anecdote that bears repeating. When I was newly married but not yet a mother, I was musing aloud to my cousins about what kind of mother I thought I might be. “I have a feeling,” I said, “that I’ll be a lot like my mom.”

And my cousin Julia (herself then also a newlywed with no kids, and now the mother of four, newborn to age 6, bless her), said — before she could allow her brain filter to kick in and stop her –  “But Aunt Carol was so mean!”

Aunt Carol, a.k.a. my mother, was mean, in the sense of being exacting, scheduled, strict. Practical, not mushy. She ran our house with rules that were clear (if grating sometimes, and honestly, if they weren’t grating, what kind of kids would we have been? As I’m fond of saying, the parent provides the envelope; the kids push against it). But my late revelation has been this: She could not have done it any other way.

If there’s one thing my mother was — well, is — it’s true to herself.  She was the mother she had to be. She couldn’t have been another kind. That was just her. It’s taken exactly eight-and-a-half years of parenting for me (and I mean that precisely; as my Daniel pointed out to me this morning, it’s his half-birthday today) to realize her genius in quite these terms.

She didn’t decide to be a certain way as a parent. She. Just. Was.

And I’m finally starting to believe, the more I parent and the more parents I watch at their own parenting tasks, that it’s when we aren’t the parents we’re supposed to be that we get into trouble. I couldn’t be any other way but the way I am. You can learn stuff, sure. And you can research aspects of the job and make decisions on various things, but the vast majority of it requires knowing who you are and parenting as that person, no one else. I tend toward the practical, like my mother (hint: this is a major understatement); so trying to be less so would feel uncomfortable, inauthentic. I’ve never asked her if she considered and then rejected other general ways of being a mother, but my guess would be that I’d get one of those, “you kids today think too much” looks from her.

So. Without further ado, and with just a short time until another Mother’s Day is upon us, here are a few key tenets of mine that are liberally borrowed from the Original Mean Mom:

• Don’t apologize too much to your children. If you can’t do something, buy something, go someplace, or stay someplace, you may think apologizing is the right approach. But be careful how you do it. If your apology is abject (“I’m so, so sorry we can’t get you these boots, honey. You poor, poor dear”), beware, because you’re raising a potential professional victim. If you tell your child over and over that he deserves stuff he’s not getting, get ready to put in calls to college professors and bosses when things don’t go as Junior wanted them to. Apologize for the really bad stuff: the f-bomb dropped at breakfast; the mean-spirited gossip about the neighbor). If you can’t buy the boots? A simple, “I get you’re disappointed, but we can’t afford them” will do. Then go about your day.

• Don’t fight your kids’ battles. Tempting, I know. My mother never did this; she didn’t intervene in problems with friends or even minor issues with teachers or dance instructors or Girl Scout leaders. Notice I said minor issues. She let us work things out. Honestly, I doubt it occurred to her to step in  and, say, call a friend’s mom if I came home upset that Patti didn’t share her Barbie van with me. However, when the issues were major? She came out like a lioness. That’s the difference: I remember the times she (and my dad) went to bat for me. It made me realize that I could do a lot on my own, but that she had my back, big time.

• Make your kids do chores. I think I may have related this story before, too; how my parents had a penchant for moving the woodpile from one side to the other of the yard. As a little girl, I gotta tell you, it is no fun to pick up logs (with bugs living in between them), load them on a wheelbarrow, and move them someplace else to be re-stacked. In truth, maybe this happened twice. But we did everything else, too — inside and out. When I was 13, my parents promised me a new outfit for an autumn trip we were taking if I mowed the lawn all summer. I did it. Sucker? Maybe — but I can mow a lawn.

• Make dinner. Just one per evening. Left to my devices, I’d have eaten cheese-and-butter sandwiches and spaghetti every day. I did not get these foods every day. We had beef and spinach and stew and chicken and broccoli and — gag — liver and onions. I had to eat salad. I had to clean my plate. I still have no answers to whether this is always the right approach, but in my experience, it is. I guess it could have backfired, but in my family, it didn’t. My brother was an even pickier eater than I am, and these days he cooks farmer’s market vegetables I’ve never even heard of, and has been known to make his own sushi, for heaven’s sake. I err on the side of making foods my kids mostly like, and I’m lucky in that they do actually eat vegetables (if a frustratingly small group of them, plainly cooked). But I’m thinking my mother’s approach was right because it wasn’t about tip toeing around enticing kids to eat foods that were good for them. It was about practicality (the very idea of spending money and time on “kid” foods was anathema) and a hearty dose of “because I said so.”

So. That’s just a taste of what I borrowed, liberally, from my mother, so you could say that I’m trying to give credit where it’s due. Or you could say I want to say thanks to my mother, but given what I’ve realized here — that she had no choice but to be the mother she was — maybe “thanks” isn’t right.

What I wish you all this mother’s day? A clear-eyed look at the kind of mother you are because you have to be, and comfort and confidence in that.

Can you see what's on my big boy's shirt? Mr. Strong. I'm a lucky, lucky mom.

Regular readers may have noticed I didn’t post last week — that’s because we were in Florida for a bit over a week, visiting my parents, who some years ago joined the throng of Northerners who take off for southern climes in January and don’t come back until April or so, leaving their progeny with the snow and the gloom, as well as with the option to come on down for some sun & fun.

This year, we were there for slightly longer than usual (the school vacation combined with the jacking up of February-break-time airfares make planning a vacay awkward, so it ended up being less expensive to stretch the trip a couple days beyond the week the kids had off from school. Sounds like a good idea? In theory, yes. In practical terms, not so much. I love my parents to pieces, and some niggling family dynamic issues notwithstanding, we get along. My boys adore them, they show us a good time, my husband gets along famously with both my mom and dad. So what’s the problem?

A wee bit too much togetherness, with me, in the center, as the link connecting my kids to my parents, and my husband to my parents. The end result is that the boys had fun, but I felt slightly stressed. Also, truth be told (and I’m all about telling the truth about child-rearing, right?), it was just plain old too much kid-time. Me and my boys, 24/7, is only fleetingly wonderful. Overall, sure, it’s precious. I am keenly aware of the passing of time, of how quickly my babies stopped being babies. Now seven, Daniel, in particular, is breaking my heart on pretty much a daily basis. He’s still so young, but then he is busting his britches for more independence. He’s just so… big. And strong. And his own person.

I want to build times like this vacation into our years, to enjoy this before they scoff at the idea of spending a week with mom and dad, much less Grandma and Grandpa (oh, and did I mention that we also spent time with my in-laws, who also snowbird it for a month or so, conveniently not too far from where my parents winter? Yep. It was a Grandparent-palooza!). But that doesn’t mean that each and every moment of the past eight days was swimming in a sea of mommy love. No, it was not. I found myself wishing for a shorter trip, to get back and get them back to school, to leave my parents to their golf and their friends and the relative peace of their condo without Cars cars and crayons underfoot.

Then a funny thing happened on the plane on the way home yesterday. Not funny-ha-ha, but funny in that niggling way that sticks with you. Seated behind Daniel and me (my husband was sitting across the aisle with James) was a mother with two young children, a boy and a girl, I’d guess about a year or two older than Daniel. The boy, quite suddenly, let out a loud, long yell. It shook me out of my seat. Then he did it again. In the exact moment that his mother reached across her daughter in the middle seat to touch her son’s arm, I registered that she wasn’t about to angrily shush him. I realized that he wasn’t being disruptive on purpose. The child had a problem — Tourette’s maybe? Or autism? The mother did her best to soothe him, but he wouldn’t stop until we were in the air and he could fire up his portable DVD player and watch a movie.

The boy, whose name was Colin, I found out, yelled out in that sharp, startling way a few more times over the course of the flight. Daniel jumped every time, but I quietly explained to my son that this boy had a problem, that he couldn’t help what he was doing. I forget exactly how I explained it, but I said something like, “that boy has something just slightly wrong, maybe with his brain, that makes him unable to control what he’s doing. He can’t help it.” Daniel still winced at the yells, but otherwise wasn’t bothered. I winced, though. The mother was totally calm, even cheerful, which I’m sure must be her way of coping with his issues (and also went a long way toward making those around us understand, without having to say anything, that there was nothing she could do; no one said a word).

In the last 20 minutes of the flight, my boy pulled up the armrest, and put his head down on my lap. Before long, he’d fallen asleep, my big second grader, his large, heavy head with its untamable mop of dark brown hair resting on my leg. I held my book with one hand, and stroked his cheek with the other. Just as when he was a baby and slept on me, he both drooled and sweated, gradually dampening my jeans.

Meanwhile, Colin yelped and shouted.

Like I said, it was a small moment, and the obvious feelings — of gratitude and great love — bubbled up. It’s natural for any mother to feel that “but for the grace of God” sense when she sees another mom with a much, much greater burden. Then the funny thing happened. At one point, I put my book down and put both hands on my kid. I did all my usual mommy things, like cleaning a little stray wax out of his ear (gross? Sorry; it’s a habit I picked up from my mother, who couldn’t let any earwax or navel lint sit for long, either); trying in vain to smooth his hair, still stiff from yesterday’s dose of pool chemicals; shifting the collar of his shirt where it looked like it might be tight against his neck; slipping a hand under his shirt to feel his breathing and his skin over ribs newly exposed by a growth spurt.

I realized in that small, necessary moment that I wasn’t just lucky to have this kid and his little brother, busily coloring across the aisle with his dad. I was lucky to be able to do these tiny bits of mother-care, to literally feel him growing under my hands. I don’t know for sure if that moment was connected to being confronted with a boy like Colin, but I feel somehow that it was.

But whatever prompted it, I’m glad it happened. Though it didn’t stop me from being very, very grateful that they are both safely and happily back in school today, back up north in the tail end of a snowy winter.

Cheers, grandma and grandpa!

Yesterday, I was reading my friend Lenore Skenazy’s blog, Free Range Kids. She posted about a “Dear Amy” advice column that appeared in the paper — the writer of the question, a grandmother, had an interesting problem: She and her husband have been babysitting their grandson, overnight, twice a week, since he was born (right away I’m thinking: give those grandparents a medal, right?!). At that time, their daughter presented them with some rules for caring for the baby, which included a provision that they not drink wine on those days/nights. Um, what?

I was totally, absolutely, and completely expecting Amy to say, “tell your daughter, with all due respect, that you’re in charge when her child is in your care, and that a glass of wine with dinner is not going to make you less able to be a good guardian.”

That’s not what Amy said. She was with the daughter in her zero-tolerance conviction that not a drop of alcohol should pass the grandparents’ lips. I mean, sure, don’t get falling-down drunk, but no wine with dinner? Really?

Lenore’s take is that a glass of wine does not turn responsible adults into raving lunatics who should be nowhere near young children (if so, as she points out, the whole nation of France must be bad parents).

I agree, and my further take is this: If you are asking your parents to care for your children, for free, out of the goodness of their hearts, you get what you pay for.

Harsh? Maybe; but it’s how I feel. I see too many parents who simply assume that their own parents live to care for the grandchildren — and will make all sorts of accommodations to do so: Quit their jobs or change their work schedules; drive miles and miles out of their way; childproof their homes; not go out with their own friends or away for the weekend without checking first if their services are needed, and so on.

And now, not drink any wine.

I feel as though if I hand the grandparents a booklet of rules and instructions, I should also hand them a paycheck. Plus, by setting down rules for my parents, part of what I’m doing is trying to shape their relationship with their grandchildren. I don’t want to do that. I want them to figure out how they get along and what they enjoy doing together, all on their own. That relationship is precious–because let’s face it, who knows how long they’ll have it available to them?

Just last weekend, my sons spent the night with my mom and dad while my husband and I spent a blessedly wonderful evening celebrating our anniversary with dinner, a show, and a hotel room in the city. I’m so gosh-darn grateful to have parents who (a) are alive and healthy; and (b) are willing to take my sons overnight, that I couldn’t imagine giving them instructions, beyond “please make sure they eat and sleep.”

When I was a kid, my sister and my two cousins and I would spend a few days every summer at our grandparents’ house. Neither my parents nor my aunt and uncle made demands or assumptions that I’m aware of; they were probably just glad we were out of their hair for a few days. We hung out in our grandfather’s cluttered garage, looking at all the weird things he collected. We slept, all four of us, cross-wise in our grandparents’ bed. We ate whatever they gave us, went wherever they took us. I can’t remember anything un-sanctioned by parents that we did, but rest assured: our folks had no idea what we were doing.

Which is just how it should be.