Why you should hire ME

Perfect Daughter is getting together a perfect resume for her perfect law school. It's an interesting time of the year to look back on all your accomplishments, brag about yourself in a non-bragging way, and send it out to people who possibly will determine a good bit of your future. She is NOT enjoying it, but we are enjoying watching her do it!

It made me think about MY resume. You know, it's the New Year. What have I accomplished? What do I hope to accomplish in the future? How is my resume shaping up?

One thing....I'm a mom and a housewife. That's it. That's all I've been for 23 years now. I actually remember planning on attending law school myself back in 1982. (That was the lunch I had with DH when I told him I had decided to take the LSAT and he reached across the table and sweetly asked if I had considered nursing.) Perfect Daughter herself interrupted those plans with her tiny six pound arrival in 1984.

Since then, I've wondered if I were to try to get into the grad school of parenthood, would I have passed the entrance exams? How would my undergraduate GPA look?

Well, I did all right with Mothering 101. It was trial by fire for me and DH because our baby was very, very sick. The nature of her illness sent me straight to the library where I learned more about it than our pediatrician, and I spent hours conversing with neonatalogists on the best course of action. All of this, of course, assured that Perfect Daughter would get extra brain cells with all that extra oxygen, of that I am certain! I also made me "mommy" in a way I never pictured I would be. Think, "mother tiger". I quit my job, clipped coupons and learned to make casseroles. I timed the check to diaper service to "hit" the bank on payday so it would clear. Eating out and vacations came rarely and by way of grandparents. And it was all perfect in every way. I got an A and she got an A plus. We made it through that first weed-out class together.

Fast forward five years. Oh man, then my undergrad in parenting became much more challenging. We tried kindergarten, but when the teacher called me in for a conference on DAY ONE, I knew that Perfect Daughter wasn't living up to her name in that cute little classroom. Who knew that she wouldn't want to leave the drama center for the math center when she was supposed to, and who knew she had that wicked right hook? She was young anyway, so I brought her home and taught her phonics, reading and how to really enjoy breakfast when it's not served at 7 am. This stood her in good stead when we decided to homeschool her fulltime in second grade. My own mother was seriously ill with cancer, and we wanted to be with her all the time, not just on a school schedule.

Homeschooling Perfect Daughter was more of a mobile school than a traditional one-room schoolhouse. She would sit by my mother's bed and learn her penmanship, recite poems and, well, yes, be very versed on world news as the TV droned on. They developed a bond that is still there, fourteen years after my mother died when my daughter was only 7 years old. Perfect daughter is the only grandchild who remembers her grandmother.

Our mobile school became a home-hospital school with our next babies. Perfect Daughter was 10 and quite comfortable with curling up with me in bed (bedrest for mom, better for the babies) to read Jane Austen and to work on multiplication tables. Our favorite snack was white cheddar cheese and apples, which she prepared with perfection, of course. When the babies came, my mothering had to shift to baby-mama, but I had such a good helper. In fact, she basically audited Mothering 101. She is now set for future perfect babies, unlike her mom, who had never diapered a baby until they handed her to me that day in 1984.

Yes, she ended up with a high SAT score, a practically perfect ACT score, loads of scholarship offers, a wonderful college education...and she's off to law school.

And I wonder, what would I put on MY application? Raised three kids? It seems so, so, so "nothing". I want to have written treatises. I want to have hosted world leaders. I want to have been on TV, espousing my important opinion. I want, at the very least, to still be thin.

Instead, it was diapers, followed by fevers and night-time sickness, followed by comforting during grief, followed by reading and critiquing papers, followed by visiting colleges, followed by clapping at graduation. All for someone else.

So maybe my resume is still current and working for 2007. I won't have to tweak it for, say, eight more years. And by then, Rowdy Son and Sweet Girl will have given me enough hours for a triple major.

Oh, and my resolution for 2007 is STILL to lose twenty pounds. And finish reading a Russian novel. And bake bread from scratch. And learn to paint (not just kitchen cabinets either). And learn HTML (no, not really). But mostly, be a better mom.