Now for something REALLY scary...

I think I am a damn good mom...until I'm not.

I breastfed for almost three years. I co-slept (and still sometimes do). I stay home, for heaven's sake! I am sweet, patient, attentive, long-suffering, strategic, oh so loving...until something tips me over the edge and I basically crack. Then, I am a really, really shitty mother.

Case in point: This past weekend we took a day trip to Philadelphia. It's about a 2.5 hour drive. With just one child, a nearly five-year-old girl who has a bladder of steel and a love of DVDs, the ride was totally no big deal. We arrive painlessly and set out about our plans to visit some playgrounds and pubs. We're prepared with layers of clothing to fine tune our comfort level for sun or shade, sitting or walking briskly, in the 65 degree but windy day. We're prepared with snacks and sandwiches in case the girl doesn't want to eat the restaurant food—we know she'll eat the Belgian fries but probably little else, and she'll be better for it anyway, with the healthy Tofurky and cheese for lunch and natural peanut butter and jelly for dinner. I even packed and chilled down some milk for the child, as well as raw carrots and strawberries, and some other things. Well prepared!

The first chunk of the day was great. Franklin Playground. She rode the carousel and my husband and I proudly watched as she tried the different things on the playground with just the right mix of caution and courage. Then, she wanted to be pushed on the swings. No problem. It was lovely. She didn't argue when it was time to go. In fact, she suggested we go have lunch. So we went.

The lunch spot was just under a mile from the playground. I did my best cheerleading on the walk, pointing out the pretty cherry blossom trees, cranes at work, doggies trotting down the street, to keep it exciting for the child. But, it was not long before the whining began. Children seem to have so much energy for play and whatever else they want to do, but often when it comes to just going for a walk in a city, they get "tired" quickly. But tired is often just another word for bored or somehow otherwise uncomfortable. My child this time apparently had some chapped lip problem. The space between her upper lip and nose was red. She hadn't mentioned it until now. She claimed the sun shining on her face was hurting her. I offered sunglasses. She said, no, it's lower! It's my lips! (So smart, so articulate, she is.) We walked on the shady side of the street to keep the sun off her face. The whining subsided a little, but not enough for me.

"Look you are not the only person here. I'm sorry your lip hurts, but that has nothing to do with your walking. You need to stop whining. You're just going to have to suck it up and move on. Daddy and I are people too and we just want to go for a nice walk and have a pleasant time, so you just can't carry on like this! We'll be at the restaurant soon!" I said to her. She got weepy, but did suck it up. Good for her!

Finally we got to the restaurant and she whined a little about random things but quickly got involved with me in a game of animal tic-tac-toe in her sketch book as Daddy studied the draft list and decided on his meal. I already knew I'd be getting moules-frites, and I'd leave the beer choice to him. The child was her typically well-behaved self during lunch, deconstructing her sandwich, but eating about half of it (maybe a little less), cutely stealing as many fries as she could and finagling some of my baguette, which I gladly shared. She groaned under her breath at the crying baby across the aisle, "I need some quiet time!" Her dad and I both explained to her that not so long ago she was a baby, too, and we brought her to places like this then and that she should be nice. Babies cry. It's what they do, we told her. We had a great time reminiscing about her babyhood and all the places we went together.

After lunch, we headed out to walk around the city a bit before going to the next playground, the big super-duper Smith playground. She was cute, noticing letters and signs asking what they spell, knowing some things they spelled. She walked up at our height level on some brick fences. She was cute, then she was whiny. The lip thing again. Didn't bother her at all during lunch, even while eating and drinking, but now, somehow it did. I got the idea of getting her a little hat to cast a shadow on her lips and keep the sun off, since that's what she claimed was bothering her. I had to pee already at this point (one and a half beers did it, I guess). And, another complaint, "Mommy, I'm hot!" So I removed a layer and stuffed it into my bag.

We saw an expensive looking sports boutique and a CVS. My husband talked me out of both, saying there would probably be some more middle ground place where we could get her a cute hat down on South Street. Navigating South Street would have been cool and fun in my twenties without a kid, but as it was, it was just crowded and annoying. We popped into a couple shops that looked like they might have hats. One had only grown up hats. Another shop for kids had only Polo Ralph Lauren hats for $21. Desperate as I was to shut the child up with a hat, I was not ready to pay that price for a hat and a label I didn't even like. So we pressed on.

"Mommy, I'm hungry!" She said. Now, we'd left the restaurant probably 20 minutes ago by now, so I was like, WTF?!?! For real?

"You should've eaten more at lunch," I told her. "The time to eat is when we're sitting down at the restaurant, not when we're walking through the city." But, I was not going to subject myself to more of her whining, so I dug through my bag, now overstuffed with our unneeded extra layers of clothing, emptying everything out and rearranging it all to find the banana I so smartly packed for her.

After a couple of ridiculously fruitless and annoying stops, the child still whining, me having to pee more and more, I came upon a Claire's boutique-type shop and found the child a hat. $12.95. Fine. I went to go buy it and told my husband to hang back with the child by the door or outside instead of by the crowded register area. I was waiting. Waiting. Needing to pee. Argh. Kid comes toward me with the banana, "Mommy! Mommy! There's something yucky in this banana!" Oh, seriously?!?! I tell her to go back to her father and have him take care of it. Jesus Christ! I mean, couldn't they just live without me for five minutes?

Finally, hat in hand, I go back to them, put it on her and we all say how cute she looks and how now she will be all set, shielded from the sun, ready for that cool other playground, just as soon as we walk a little more to see the city and stop at some bottle shops (we're beer geeks). We're OK for about a half a block til she starts whining that she's cold. "Oh so cold! So, so cold!" She keeps saying. It's not actually cold, but I offer a jacket. She declines the jacket but keeps moaning and groaning that she is cold. I have to pee so bad. This is where I break.

I stop on the sidewalk, pull her aside out of the crowded walkway, way too roughly. Gripping her arms I yell. "Enough!" Her face crumples into tears. "All you do is whine and demand things you little bitch! I can't take it anymore! Here! Here is your jacket!" I rummage wildly through the overstuffed bag, find her fleece and roughly yank it over her head. I don't know what my husband thinks or is doing. It's just me and her and anger and tears. I see him looming above us, though and shove her toward him. "I'm so done with you. You need anything, you ask him! You stick with him! I want noting to do with you!" And I walk in front of them a few paces til we approach our next stop, Whole Foods, where we were all going to pee.

My husband does a good job of comforting her, as he often does. He never loses his cool. Of course, he's never the one carrying the bag who gets demand after demand after demand. But, he never does lose his cool. I, by contrast always lose my cool. It happens fairly regularly. It's not always this intense, thank goodness. It's just the kind of person I am. I don't like it. I've gotten better. But there it is, the dirt on me.

I'm writing this post because of the whole scary mommy, mommy confessions and perceptions of people being perfect or having perfect lives thing. To me, calling your precious child who is more well-behaved than most a bitch *is* actually a little scary, and a lot wrong. I don't think people really want to talk about the truly scary things because maybe we're scared that it's a slippery slope to Andrea Yates-ville? Or at least Joan Crawford land? I don't know. Maybe, on a positive note, it's just because the good really does far outweigh the bad?

At the other playground later that day my daughter said, "I love Philadelphia! I will never forget this day!" And I felt like an asshole, but lucky. "What will you remember about the day?" I ask her. "The long, long slide and the restaurant," she said. "And the carousel!" I ask her if she can forgive me for yelling at her and she says yes. Thank goodness!

I did have a little sit-down with her earlier in the day, right after the big blowout. My husband was looking around a shop and I sat with her and apologized for yelling and being mean to her. I always apologize for losing my cool, and I think this is the only thing that redeems me. At the very least, it teaches my kid I am human, not a martyr and certainly not a saint. I also explained very directly that she can't make demand after demand on a person like that and constantly nag them for one thing after another. I think she got it at the time, but, she's little, and I'm sure she will do the same thing again.

I hope I can react better next time. I think part of it is packing my bag more strategically so it's not so hard to get things out (it always starts so neatly packed, but then the shuffling on-the-go to meet demands tends to destroy the order). But on a less physical, more abstract level, I might have to learn to tolerate the whining more instead of feeling compelled to do things to make it stop. When she was a baby it was easy to stop the crying. You just cuddle them and give them the breast. Magic. They're at peace. Now, it's not so easy. And sometimes they need things just to need things, I suspect, for attention, or because they're bored. Traipsing through a city on foot possibly does not have the charm to a little one as it does to a grown up. After the blow out, I carried her big, 40 pound body through the city. Partly because we had to go quickly to get back to the parking meter, and partly because I wanted to re-collect her, re-establish the closeness we normally have and make sure she knew she was loved. (Me handing her off to her father in rage lasted about five minutes!) Holding her, though physically draining, was so sweet. She loved being high up. She joked about being as tall as me. We all joked about her being big enough to go out and get a job, and what job would she want to get.

It's scary how quickly we reconnect and make up. I worry, am I setting her up to be comfortable in an "abusive" relationship where all her partner has to do afterwards is hold her in his (or her) arms and say sorry? I remember when I was in an abusive relationship, even after the guy hit me, I so craved the resolution of him coming and holding me and saying sorry. The parallel with my kid makes me sick. I actually tell her very explicitly not to let anyone hit her. If someone hits her she needs to tell them, loudly and firmly, "No! you can't hit me!" I tell her over and over that nobody should hit her. I haven't spanked in a long time, now that she's bigger, but I have to admit I have spanked in her lifetime. It makes me sick.

And there's really no good way to end this post except to say that, yeah, nobody is perfect, parenting can be messy and not easy, but, not in the ways popular culture tends to be so glib about, I suppose.