Plus, the Lesson Learned

Mommy. Madre. Majka.

What do you picture when you hear the word mother?

Flowers? A golden and pink embossed card with flowing letters that you give to the woman who used to wipe your little tush? A 1950’s smiling mom?

Maybe you imagine her singing Somewhere over the Rainbow or Twinkle Little Star until the hum thrummed you to sleep. A woman calm, and protective. Caring.

A society-made mother.

But certainly, you’d never imagine the ‘perfect woman’ (as they are expected to be) as angry.

Or even…pissed. (Shh, I know it’s not a kid-friendly word but, in this case, it fits.)

No mom gets spitting mad.

Do they?

Mother Bear and the Spelling Bee

We sat at dinner enjoying our food. My kiddo had this awesome crunchy chicken and my daughter mawed on broccoli, funny bunny. A coworker (we live and work at a place that has meals for its employees) sat down beside us.

We had a nice conversation about books and the writing process in general, one of my favorite topics. It was lovely. Motherhood can get lonely, so this polite chatter was pleasant.

My son also enjoyed it.

My sweet kiddo told this guy about galaxies and black holes, what he wanted for Christmas, how he lost his first tooth, and about summer. In about five minutes this coworker had my kid’s life story.

Ha. Adorable. For a while…

Then my kiddo made up a game to play between bites of chicken. It started out as a math game but quickly progressed into a fun made-up kid game.

“What’s 5x5x4x3,” my son would ask.

“239872," this male ‘friend’ made up an answer. My kid giggled; I beamed with pride and shushed him.“

And again, but funnier.

“What’s green plus yellow?”

“Pink!” The guy said.

“Noooooo!”

And this went on. This guy never discouraged my kiddo. In fact, they played and ate more with smiles. It was cute to see my son cup up with strange equations.

Until this question.

“What’s K, plus I-D-D-O spell? (I prefer not to use my son’s name, though that's what he spelled).

And the guy answered by spelling out:

Annoying.

I didn’t say anything so he spelled it out again, a-n-n-o-y-i-n-g, thinking I’d laugh.

I didn’t. I was not impressed.

The world narrowed, and I used that fantastic opportunity to speak Ukrainian to privately tell my kiddo to leave this guy alone.

I felt like a mother bear ready to protect her cub, but the only way I could do it was by silence and the gift of having a bilingual family. Confrontation is not my thing, but I was sincerely upset.

No one messes with a mom’s kids. It hurt that he’d been so friendly in one instant and then change, sneakily, like that. If you really want to make a mother upset/pissed, be mean to her child.

And, it hurt.

This man didn’t know my child. He doesn’t know that he is this smart kid who is over-eager to share the things he learns with the world and the people in it because he thinks they’re amazing.

He wants to share his joy.

And this man crushed it. Yeah, inside I was pissed.

The Lesson Learned: Constructive Anger

Recently I have found out how honest, cool, and helpful Tom Kuegler is. One thing he mentioned was to write about what makes you angry.

Non-fiction is an argument. We must take a side and teach it to others. Not everyone may like that or agree with your point of view--and that's okay, though not always fun.

Like comments here on News Break. Sometimes, they hurt.

But still, disagreement gets the conversation going, and that’s so important.

So, what makes you angry?

• School shootings?
• Bullying?
• Sexism in the publishing world?
• People who sleep with their dogs in the same bed?

Whatever it is, write about it. It’s your opinion. Your voice.

Let’s hear it.

My anger this time was a man who spoke ill of my child. Hey, I even thought I was inwardly overreacting, but another mother said she would have decked him. (Ha!)

Many times you’ll find you’re not alone in your anger.

It needs to be voiced. And not just with writing. You can use your hobby, your passion, to vent anger in a healthy, constructive way.

Maybe this man thought he was funny. Maybe he was ignorant. I can’t know his mind. There is definitely a chance that he didn’t mean a single harmful thing by his emphatic spelling bee with my kid.

Either way, though I outwardly smiled with my red lipstick shining like a 1950’s Mom, I was upset. I tried to be calm. Perfect. But you know what? I should have shared my feelings, my voice.

As writers do. As people should do.

Finally, what gets your blood boiling?

Share it here, then with the world. Maybe your story will help someone else.

Let’s hear it.

Be nice to a mother's kids. But if you get angry, use that anger to better yourself.

We will be impressed.

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