On becoming my mother, and other reflections on gratitude

So I am discovering secrets of familial evolution that I had thought were mere urban legend. To whit, if a particular Grandmother had been a very, very good girl, she would in fact get her wish that her grandson act just the way his mother acted when she was a child. This has obviously happened to me, and my mother can’t help but look smug when I rant about some completely irritating habit my son has picked up. But I am not one to take such whims of fortune lying down. Oh, no. I’ve retaliated by BECOMING HER in return. Take that, Mom!

Please to be giving example? Yes. So, my son had Western Days at school (don’t ask me; Utahns are obsessed with the whole western expansion thing: pioneers, cowboys, minivans that look oddly like a vehicle driven by one of the Joads). I am not usually an overachieving mom—I’m more of a mommy minimalist, one might say, sort of in a store-bought-versus-homemade cookies and licensed-character-versus-lovingly-handmade birthday invitations kind of way. But being 3 months late with my sister’s birthday gift and missing my BFF’s birthday altogether has made me a little sheepish about my slackerdom, so I thought, dammit, my kid is going to at least have some sort of cowboy-looking something to wear on Western Day.

So off I went to Target, which I'm pretty sure is French for “if they don’t have it, you don’t really need it.” In an extremely boring pricing triumph which only the truly cheap will understand and appreciate, I made off like, well, an Old West bandit with a complete Compilation of Western Goodness: a duster coat, a pleather vest, the requisite felt hat, a neckerchief (which is the way my Nana says “bandana,” I think) and a shiny sheriff’s badge to boot. I was so proud of myself that I had to call two people solely to tell them about the coup I’d just pulled off, and I felt like surely, SURELY, I would get a Good Mom sticker on the calendar for this day.

This would be in stark contrast to one day a week or so ago, when I “surprised” the young pup in the store with an extremely overpriced Star Wars Lego kit, and instead of collapsing into paroxysms of joy at being handed manna from heaven in the form of a plastic fine-motor-skills-improving toy, he asked if he could get something else, say, an even more overpriced Cheap Plastic Non-Motor-Skills-Enhancing Passing Fad Toy of some kind. I muttered something about being grateful and how about a “thanks, mom, I just LOVE Star Wars!” and he just kind of blinked at me and repeated “Thanks, mom. I just LOVE Star Wars!”

I was somewhat mollified as we proceeded to the checkout counter, where he asked if he could get yet another addition to his mountainous hotwheels/matchbox cars collection, the extremely complicated caste system of which I have yet to understand. I snapped at him that he couldn’t get both the Legos and the car, and he chose the car. His lack of social graces in Being Grateful for What We Are Given (AND that I found myself channeling my mother’s reactions to my same behaviors in days of yore) annoyed the hell out of me until I realized it had saved me about $11.02. I mean, I was still annoyed, but at least now I could spend a ten-spot on a latte and some lip gloss to make myself feel better.

So here I am with the cowboy costume, ready to surprise him, and there you are, already wincing because you know what’s coming. He looked at the stuff, then looked at me and said, “Are there any boots?” I told him there were not, and I managed not to say something snarky about how there didn’t have to be any hat or vest or costume at all for ungrateful little boys. He then asked if there were any “cowboy pants,” by which I assume he meant chaps. Now there are probably parents at his pricey little preschool who would have a leatherworker create custom-made chaps for their little darling, but I, of course, am not everybody else’s mother. So I explained that no, they didn’t make cowboy pants for such little cowboys.

He paused a minute, tried on the vest, groused that the neckerchief was too tight (as I’m thinking “I’LL show you too tight!”), and explained that cowboys do not wear sheriff badges. I sat down, deflated, wondering why I buy this kid ANYTHING but cookies and tiny cars (which almost always elicit the rapturous reaction I’m looking for). I felt like buying my mother something shiny for all the times I must have done this to her (and, frankly, to get a reaction that would satisfy my appreciate-me jones). Then he looked at me and smiled and said, “I LOVE all my stuff, mama. Thank you for buying it for me.”

And so I’m my mother. He does the same frustrating things I did, and yet, I love him in an almost searingly painful way. I just can’t wait for him to grow up and be, like, 36 and still forget to send Thank-You cards.