Choosing Between Special Forces And Assisted Living
After dropping off our last child at college, we sat in silence on the long drive home. “What now?” I wondered. Glancing at my husband John, I noticed an ear hair was beginning to curl out of his ear and down into his collar. Sure, he would need me to pull that hair he couldn’t reach, help keep his eyebrows separated, and alert him to when he had spinach between his teeth, but sadly he wouldn't need me the same way our kids had.
With the last child leaving, it was as if my stint on “The Apprentice” was over and Donald had just leaned in and bellowed, “You're fired.”
The next day, I was catching up with a friend when she caught me off guard with a single question. “Now that you're an empty nester, what are you planning to do with yourself?” She spoke with urgency as if I was at risk of becoming as obsolete as Blockbuster.
“I have no idea,” I told her. “Perhaps I’ll skip this phase of life entirely and move into assisted living early.”
After being a full-time mom for nearly thirty years, the thought of sitting alone, rocking peacefully with only my thoughts to occupy me, assuming I still had any, was somewhat alluring. I could attend field trips I didn't plan, dine on food I didn't cook, and lounge in bed all day binge-watching Netflix in my comfy pajamas without anyone worrying that hell had frozen over or that pigs could now fly. “You must admit that has an underappreciated appeal,” I told my friend.
“Seriously, what employable skills do you have?” she asked.
“I can take a nap anywhere, anytime. I can touch my tongue to my nose, and I have mastered the at-home facial with the steam from the dishwasher,” I responded
“What employable skills?” she asked again.
“As a mom, I’ve got skills,” I told her confidently. “I'm just not sure how employable they are.”
“Any particular field?” she asked.
“I have a lot of experience in health care.”
Let's see. I’ve administered 1,728 doses of Tylenol. I’ve kissed and applied Band-Aids to 1,200 boo-boos. I can tell a child's temperature with just my elbow and can sense when they are about to throw up in traffic. I once performed surgery with only super glue when my son’s knuckle was shaved off during an apple-peeling debacle. I’ve extracted 72 splinters and 18 fish hooks. I saved one hamster headed toward the light with mouth-to-mouth, and I’ve removed 37 ticks, not counting the one I tried to remove from our dog that turned out to be a nipple.
“Bill’s half-brother, Steve, is starting a late-life career as an Uber driver,” my friend informed me.
“I have a lot of experience in transportation too.”
I can drive a school carpool with my eyes closed, often backward and uphill in the snow. I can also dislocate my own shoulder in order to retrieve a screaming child's sippy cup from the floor of the backseat while never taking my eyes off of the road. I can probably drive Uber at night and still get a full eight hours of sleep. I trained myself to nap sitting straight up with my eyes open in order to give my offspring the impression that I was watching them from the car as they spent hours practicing sports at which they’ll never be good enough to translate into a profession.
“What about working with food? You make a fairly edible meatloaf,” she said.
She’s not wrong: I’m great with food. I can slap together a school lunch in under fifteen seconds (thirty seconds if we’re out of Lunchables). I have a talent for locating items in our refrigerator that are invisible to everyone else in the family. I can make leftovers last for a week by dressing them up and disguising them as new meals. When the kids announced there was nothing in the house to eat, I was able to discover vegetables that no one recognized as food.
“I’m bilingual, too!” I remembered. “I speak fluent two-year-old. Or what about something in accounting?”
“Accounting? But you're terrible at math,” my friend pointed out.
“That actually works in my favor,” I told her, “as the IRS is now hiring 87,000 new agents. Plus, I’m great at estimating what people owe. I can tell you that each of my kids owes us eight million dollars.”
“Eight million?” she asked, incredulous.
“Obviously! That accounts for inflation and our pain and suffering.”
I then started thinking that maybe the military would be interested in employing me, and I shared this with my friend.
“Seriously? Your joking, right?” She laughed.
“Go ahead and laugh,” I said. “But I’ve developed a few rare abilities the Navy Seals might be interested in.”
I have overdeveloped olfactory senses that can sniff out potentially lethal substances. I once identified dirty gym socks and a bag of Doritos under a bed three rooms away.
I’m an avid multitasker. I can talk on the phone, fold laundry with my toes, swill wine, and help two kids with their homework all at one time.
I'm skilled at employing bribery and negotiating with tiny hostages. I know when a teen isn’t telling the truth without a lie detector machine, and I’ve held interrogations that resulted in the suspect confessing and begging for mercy in under five minutes flat. I also have great detective skills, as I can easily tell which culprit has mud on their shoes that they’ve tracked into the house.
“Impressive,” she said.
If they still underestimate the extent of the unique skills I’ve acquired in thirty years of mothering, I may need to arrange an in-person interview with U.S. Special Operations to personally demonstrate the superhero speed that kicks in when chasing a missed school bus or garbage truck. Oh, and my ability to be in three places at once.
“Special Operations?” My friend laughed in disbelief.
“Hey, being a parent is not a job for the ill-equipped,” I assured her.
“Superheroes had nothing on my mom when she was raising me,” I reminisced. “My mom could read my mind, and I’m convinced she had a sixth sense. She was fearless, especially when it came to standing up for her children. Her heart was larger than most meer mortals as it was filled with unconditional love, and of course, she had eyes in the back of her head.”
Edited by Rebekah Crozier
Contact Info avery282@gmail.com