Plan B by Anne Lamott Page A

clueless as to how to be a real mother that I believed anyone would understand. No one tells you when you’re pregnant how insane you’re going to feel after the baby comes, how pathological, how inept and out of control. Or how, when the child is older, you’ll still sometimes feel exhausted, hormonal, clueless. You’ll still find your child infuriating. And—I will just say it—dull.
    A few mothers seem happy with their children all the time, as if they’re sailing through motherhood, entranced. But up close and personal, you find that these moms tend to have little unresolved issues: they exercise three hours a day, or they check their husbands’ pockets every night, looking for motel receipts. Because moms get very mad; and they also get bored. This is a closely guarded secret; the myth of maternal bliss is evidently so sacrosanct that we can’t even admit these feelings to ourselves. But whenyou mention the feelings to other mothers, they all say, “Yes, yes!” You ask, “Are you ever mean to your children?” “Yes!” “Do you ever yell so meanly that it scares you?” “Yes, yes!” “Do you ever want to throw yourself down the stairs because you’re so bored with your child that you can hardly see straight?” “Yes, Lord, yes . . .”
    So let’s talk about this.
    One reason I think we get so angry with our children is that we can. Who else is there that you can talk to like this? Can you imagine saying to your partner, “You get off the phone now! No, not in five minutes”? Or to a friend, “Get over here, right this second! The longer you make me wait, the worse it’s going to be for you.” Or to a salesman at Sears who happens to pick up a ringing phone, “Don’t you dare answer the phone when I’m talking to you.”
    No, you can’t. If regular people spotted your hidden, angry inside self, they’d draw back when they saw you coming. They would see you for what you are—human, flawed, more nuts than had been hoped—and they would probably not want to hire or date you. Of course, most people have such bit parts in your life that they’re not around to see the whole erratic panoply that is you. But children, my God—attending to all their needs is sophysically and mentally exhausting and unrelenting that our blow-ups may be like working out cramps in our legs.
    The tyranny of waking a sleepy child at seven a.m. and hassling him to get clothed and fed in preparation for school means you’re chronically tired, resentful, and resented. In this condition, while begging him to put on socks, you are inevitably treated to an endless and intricate précis of Rugrats .
    This is how Sam started telling me about one ten-minute patch of school day, while I was trying to watch the news: “So Alex says she didn’t draw it, and then she goes like she did draw the picture herself, and then he goes like, ‘Oh yeah,’ and then she goes like, ‘Yeah, I asked her to but she said I had to,’ and then he goes like, ‘Oh, yeah, riiiight,’ then I go . . .”
    I am not an ageist: If, while I was watching the news, Jesus wanted to tell me in great detail how he runs the fifty-yard dash, I’d be annoyed with him, too: “See, most kids start out like this—the first step is a big one, like this—no, watch—and then the second is smaller, like this, and the next—no, watch, my child, I’m almost done—so see, what I do is, I start like everyone else— watch —but then my third step is like small, and the next one is bigger,so like, this P.E. teacher who sees me do it goes, ‘Whoa, Lord, cool,’ and then she goes . . .”
    People who don’t want children roll their eyes when you complain, because they think you brought this on yourself. The comedienne Rita Rudner once said