Mother’s Day is this Sunday, and if you are like me, the father of the creatures who made you the designation that is being celebrated has started asking you what you want for your special day.
There are many holidays where I think gifts are ridiculous, namely Valentine’s Day, but moms absolutely deserve a little recognition. And dads do, too! But y’all have to wait for your ties and grill accessory kits until next month.
But if you are in a position where part of your job entails being vomited, urinated and maybe even defecated on (quite literally when they are babies and then figuratively when they are teenagers), you deserve some fancy bubble bath to soak away their filth, literally or figuratively speaking.
I have not answered my husband about what I want because I don’t know. My kids are in their tweens now, so receiving a macaroni necklace or a flowerpot with their little palm prints on it probably isn’t going to happen, but that’s kind of what I want the most right now. Sniff, sniff.
I need a new ironing board. I think the one I have right now is older than both my marriage and my children combined. As such, it somehow has a huge hump in the middle. A little mountain, if you will. So, I think the iron sort of thinks it’s skiing downhill while it is pressing pants. Why should I take that away from my iron? I bet no other irons get to go to Vail every morning.
And I don’t want an ironing board. Because can you think of a less sexy gift?
Well, I can. I also brought my trusty mop bucket into our marriage and probably somewhere between year five or six, it started looking so pathetic — a wheel had fallen off and it was starting to crack down the sides — Frank bought me a new one for Christmas. He did escape murder by filling it with ice and sticking a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in it. But I usually purposefully forget that part of the story when I am telling it to girlfriends who are expressing disappointment in whatever their dumb husbands gifted them, “Well, you think that’s bad. Frank got me a mop bucket one year!” Looks of absolute horror always follow. The biggest gift from that present was the story he gave me. It’s probably one of my all-time favorites. The Champagne wasn’t bad either.
It would be hard to ice down an ironing board though. But I probably should just tell him to get me that and be done with it. I would at least use it. But I usually end up asking for gifts for the mom I want to be, not the mom I actually am.
What kind of mom do I really want to be? This is an easy question for me to answer. I really, really want to be a glamorous movie mom. Or at least a glamorous Netflix-limited-series mom.
The latest mother lust I had was while watching Netflix’s “Anatomy of a Scandal.” It stars Sienna Miller as the wife of a member of Parliament and the chic mother of two kids.
I won’t spoil the plot right this second (that will come later), but Miller elegantly strolls around London in designer clothes and then in her posh flat wearing silk robes.
In one episode, she wears a long white cashmere dress and strappy heels, her hair loosely hanging in beachy waves. At one point, she barfs in her sink, but still somehow looks amazing. Later, as she is sipping white wine and yelling at her husband, her children wake up and witness their argument from the staircase (it’s always from the staircase). She sees them and then tucks them back into bed wearing her white dress and strappy heels, looking like a supermodel. And, of course, she also seems like the perfect “mum,” no screaming, always calmly saying the right things to reassure them. And I am sure they happily eat organic veggies and drink oat milk.
I am usually wearing an old band T-shirt of my husband’s (often with holes in it) paired with Christmas pajama pants year-round. My hair involves no beach waves.
Yep, this is the glam I’m sporting in front of my fam.
There is no “let’s get you back to bed, sweetheart.” It’s more like, “If I have to tell you to get in bed one more time, I’ll [insert hollow threat].” Did you get enough Kraft Mac and Cheese to eat?
This is a mom that needs an ironing board for Mother’s Day.
But yet, I will ask for hydrangea print pajamas, an elegant silky robe or a pricey facial potion that Jennifer Lopez says keeps her looking young, even though we all know she’s using placentas or drinking cord blood or something. (I don’t know that we know that, but it seems right.)
And my husband will oblige. And then these potions and pajamas will sit in drawers and never get used. Because I will save them for “special occasions.” Or quickly determine the potions are not making me glow like J.Lo does. WTH?
But, of course, these glam moms are not without their issues. Poor J.Lo had to marry creepy Marc Anthony and then deal with A-Rod before finding her way back to one half of Bennifer. Which seems hard. And Sienna Miller’s fictional husband was — spoiler alert — an accused rapist and accessory to murder.
But I guess, you know, we all have to make trade-offs.
I really don’t care if I get an ironing board (actually that’s a lie — don’t get me that, Frank) or a silk robe I will deem too fancy to wear or placenta potions for my face. But I wouldn’t be sad at all to get a macaroni necklace or two. And let’s face it, those just wouldn’t look right with a white cashmere dress and strappy heels.
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