Tag Archives: Mother

Happiness Is Doing What Your Mama Says (even after she’s gone)

My mom died five years ago today.

I’ve spent the past four anniversaries of her passing confounded by the shock and awe that goes into the passage of time. I wrote about it last year, and the year before that, and so on. I’ve always focused on my kids because – truly — nothing is a greater catalyst for maternal awareness than grief and loss. It halts us: little boys sprouting facial hair and muscled man-limbs in the blink of an eye, teenage girls blossoming into fascinating young women (with – eek! – boyfriends) and the dizzying commitments on calendar pages that keep us busier and busier (and busier…) with each passing year. If only we had a dollar for every friend to lament, “Where did the time go?” on a post or picture. It happens every day.

I think this year, though, I’m feeling different. I’m certainly still amazed by the quickness of time (and yes, I am still in disbelief that I can now legally grab a beer with 50% of my children). But I’m finding as time moves on, I am less paralyzed by the passage of it and more accepting of the presence – and present — of it. I like it. I really, really like knowing – and even not knowing – something’s coming ahead. This slight shift in my personal paradigm keeps me excited and hopeful for the future, even on the down days.

Graduations. Colleges. Engagements. Professions. A stubborn boy’s long hair FINALLY getting chopped … There is so much greatness going on at every turn of our lives, and so much promise, it’s almost unfair not to be happy. I have to be honest: if my mom ever caught wind that there was anything other than joy where her grandkids are concerned, she would be one pissed chick.

So while I miss her like crazy, I can’t often stay sad for more than a moment or two. That’s just not how she rolled.

I’ve no doubt part of my mind shift came with turning 50 this year.

50.

Holymutherfkkingsh*t, right? How the effing hell did that happen? I’m pretty sure I can still dig up my tee-shirt that boasts “We work less and party more, cuz we’re the class of ’84.” Seriously, this is something. A lot of reflection comes with that magic number. I remember planning my mom’s 50^th surprise party. We crammed all her friends into my tiny newlywed apartment and basically threw her a keg party. She didn’t drink beer but we did, and as far as entertaining, okay, we knew little else. It worked. She was elated – and equally annoyed: she had just become a grandmother and was none too happy that her little baby Jesus didn’t make it to her kegger. Still, she was surrounded by love. And was until the end.

On these anniversaries I think of the friends my mom left behind and I am so, so sad for them to be going on without her. I know profoundly the void they feel.

She taught me well. Like her, I’ve become adept at insulating myself with friends who care deeply for me, friends I would do anything for in return. Most are a phone call away. Others, a car ride. One, a plane ride taken on a moment’s notice.

Growing up, I used to read Erma Bombeck all the time. I loved the stuffing out of her. During winter break of my senior year of college I came across her column in the New York Daily News entitled “No Greater Friend Than a Best Friend.” I clipped it and held onto it for a couple of months and then mailed it in a birthday card to Kristi, my best friend since 5^th grade. There was rarely a time we were ever living in the same state together for very long. Kristi held onto it for almost a decade, then sent it back to me in a card for my 30^th birthday. I framed the yellow newsprint and sent it back her way when she turned 40.

Naturally it made its way back to me a few months ago.

It’ll hang on my wall for another ten years until, well, you get it.

How unfathomably fortunate that I have a 40-year friendship going strong?

How impossibly amazing for my mom to be the subject of such beautiful memories for so many?

How ridiculously wrong that my own children didn’t plan my 50^th festivities??? (I kid, I kid. I masterfully controlled every detail.)

I think about her every day but I honor her today.

You’re on so, so many minds today, Mom.

Cheers and love.

xoxo

Tina Drakakis blogs at Eyerollingmom and was featured in the 2014 Boston production of “Listen to Your Mother: Giving Motherhood a Microphone.” Her work has been featured in NPR’s “This I Believe” radio series yet she places “Most Popular 1984” on top of her list of achievements. (Next would be the home improvement reality TV show of 2003 but her kids won’t let her talk about that anymore). A witty mother of four, she takes on cyberspace as @Eyerollingmom on Twitter and Eyerollingmom on Facebook. and@Eyerollingmom on Instagram.

Home Sweet Hope

Daughter Strong: Four Years of Reflection

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Mom doing what she loved best

My mom died four years ago today.

I no longer spontaneously cry – making beds, walking down the produce aisle, seeing commercials for cancer centers when I least expect it —

But I still catch myself absent mindedly reaching for the phone when something funny happens. You know, the house phone. I can’t really name too many people I still talk to on my house phone anymore. Even now, 1460 days later, I’m not ready to get rid of it.

I’ve honored her memory every passing year by putting into words the changes that have crept into my life in the time without her and have usually marked its passage by focusing on my kids; their size, their maturity (or, hello, teenagers: lack thereof), and their role as unknowing anchors in my unsteady journey through middle age. It’s funny; I often wonder how they’d take knowing the true strength of their super powers.

What’s heaviest on my mind on this anniversary, though, is the profound change of my emotional core. My emotions – and the things that affect me — have veered tremendously from what once was.

You know what angers me most now? When friends roll their eyes over their mothers’ forgetfulness. Or annoying habits. Or intrusiveness. Or anything, really. I find myself irritated when they complain about perfunctory – and quick – visits with their moms and I often suppress the need to scream when hearing they dutifully “have to” go see their moms for dinner, or doctor’s appointment, or — again — anything, really. It infuriates me that they just don’t get it. Or understand what others would give for one more day.

Know what makes me happy now? That my mom died so young. And quick. It’s actually a rather ironic personal admission I’ve made peace with. She was only 69 when she passed and the toxins in her body were vicious and speedy, taking her within six months from start to end. The thing is, prior to her diagnosis, she was beautiful, hipper than most her age, and stylish. Extremely stylish. She was envied for her magnetic humor, was incredibly charismatic and if I may be cliché, a treasured friend. Really and truly treasured. She was also quite the hot ticket: In sickness, when she was too weak to get to Kohl’s, she circled items out of their circular and sent me out to buy them. Shoes and bags she never did muster up the energy to use. But she had to have them.

She was immeasurably vibrant and if I’m being totally honest, I find comfort in that image being my final remembrance of her. I will never, EVER know her as a frail, feeble old lady, with white hair and stooped shoulders. I will never feel pointed sadness helping her up a flight of stairs. I won’t ever have to visit her in a nursing home and spoon feed her. And I will never know the unfathomable despair of watching her recollection of me and other loved ones fade from her memory right before my eyes. She will forever be my great-shoe-wearing, never-leave-the-house-without-makeup-wearing, always-with-awesome-accessories-wearing 69-year-old mom. And that is my beautiful image. And that makes me happy. I imagine I’m not the first person who’s lost someone too early in life to cling to this shred of positivity, so I’m not sorry for it.

Know what I care about now? Hmmmm. Not so much. I keep a firm grasp on my family, of course, and make sure we stay intact because it’s all we have and all we need. It is the good stuff for sure. But all the other stuff? Meh. See ya. Grudges, weight-gain, the-sky-is-falling hysteria of every day that screams BREAKING NEWS? I let all go. I learned how to surround myself with drama-free friends. I ask myself, What’s the worst thing that can happen? And I realize it’s not the end of the world if (pick one) a kid doesn’t go to college or a spouse loses a job or a kid drops OUT of college or the bills are piling up or the kid doesn’t play Varsity or someone snubbed someone on Facebook. Ah, what the hell, pick ‘em all. None truly matter.

Not in the least.

So I really don’t care about all that much these days. Just the good stuff.

I wish she could see how fantastic her grandkids are turning out.

I wish she could see the living room chairs I just spray painted.

I wish she could see how long my hair’s gotten.

I just miss her like mad.

And when my youngest, sitting in my passenger seat, innocently blurts out, “This song reminds me of Nanny…

I know we all do.

“… ‘cuz when you’re fifteen …”

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My little girl turns 15 today and I am (weirdly? surprisingly? vaklempt-ly?) emotional about it. I didn’t get this way with my firstborn (a son) and I imagine I won’t get this way with the younger boys either (because naturally I have confidence they will both reach every year of adolescence with a Nerf sword in hand). And my feelings have little to do with my daughter’s incessant request for a belly button ring. (An aside: I really don’t have an issue with this – call it admirable jealousy: I clearly didn’t have her cute figure when I was a freshman. Nope, she’s battling her dear ol’ dad on this one.) Yet I’m strangely flooded with pensive memories of the significance of this milestone.

Fifteen was a good year for me. My two closest girlfriends at that age are still in my life today and hugely important to me. I make my daughter aware of this often. Fifteen was also the year my tender heart was broken for the very first time (oy vey, Adam Boyar), cementing my lifelong attraction to funny, Jewish guys (which clearly explains my utter enjoyment in Ben Stiller and Jon Stewart but curiously casts a light on my eventual choice in soul mate – a Greek/Puerto Rican/Catholic charmer…). Hmmm….

Still, everybody knows: fifteen today is waaaaay different than fifteen of then.

I feel for her.

I fear for her.

And I forever wish that her good sense remains unclouded when the rains fall and heartache beckons.

For her birthday, along with the designer sneakers and other items (that WILL be returned, I am sure of it) I got her something special. I commissioned a handmade pen and ink calligraphy of her favorite song, “Fifteen” by Taylor Swift. It is a song I am unable to listen to in its entirety without tearing up (“…..and Abigail gave everything she had to a boy…who changed his mind…”). It was meticulously crafted onto pale pink parchment paper and was framed to match her bedroom. It is beautiful.

And taped to the back of it is a card from the artist – my best friend at fifteen – who devilishly inserted a photo of the two of us, arms entwined, from 1981.

Proof that true friendships last.

Proof that strong beautiful teenaged girls survive fifteen.

Proof that even though tempers flare and hatred is hurled, our moms are always, always, always going to love us. And cry at songs that remind us of being a girl.

Happy Birthday, my sassy, sharp, and stunning Carson. You are the light in my life (and one day you’re going to laugh when you find out your dad has nicknamed you “The Fury” during this oh-so-fun time in your life).

2014 Update: Fours years later, my lady, my love, is a college sophomore today. She survived fifteen with grace and wisdom that carried her through sixteen, then seventeen, and eighteen and finally nineteen years old. She surprised me with an impromptu visit from college tonight — her first time home since August. I am happy beyond words and — apparently — feeling a little nostalgic. xoxo

Forever & Always: an 80s Kinda Gal

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I have to admit (though if my kids were to miraculously start reading my blog I’d feign dementia) that as hip as I am (that’s right) I am, at times, well, a little lame. In fact, I’m actually all sorts of lame for a variety of reasons.

For starters, I totally fake my way through the French words in “Lady Marmalade.” I know….seriously. (Hypocrite lame?)

I am vain to a fault, having worn lipstick through four childbirths (a subtle mauve) and also popped every blood vessel in my eyes because I made sure my contacts were in, too. (Insecure lame?)

I have never seen “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” (Uncool lame?)

I think tattoos are a really bad idea on most body parts (unless you’re planning on being perpetually nineteen and skinny … then I stand corrected). (Judgemental — or jealous — lame?)

I can’t text without using proper punctuation (naturally it takes me five times longer because finding the apostrophes is always troublesome). (Grammar Nazi lame?)

I loathe baking. The only reason I even own a rolling pin is because one holiday season a neighbor creatively attached one to an invitation to a cookie swap and stuck it in my mailbox (of course prompting my immediate response What the hell is a cookie swap?) (Lazy lame?)

But perhaps my lamest admission is that I really (really) heart the 80s. (Aqua Net lame?) I spent my adolescence, my college years and my Melanie-Griffith-Working-Girl stage in that decade so who can blame me? John Hughes movies, white zinfandel pinkish-pretend wine, grocery shopping in track suits … (oh wait, maybe that last thing was just Long Island …). It was just a funny time – so big and brash and booming. The best.

Lately my friend Theresa and I have been debating the Worst. Song. Ever. Whenever we think of one we text it to each other (properly punctuated on my end). So, while I’m sitting at the Macaroni Grill and my phone beeps, I’ll look down and all I’ll see is “Raspberry Beret.”

I crack up.

And when she’s waiting at a practice field, her phone lights up and displays “99 Luftballoons.”

It’s been going on for a couple of months now and I’ve just realized that all of the songs we’ve been using are 80s tunes.

“Eye of the Tiger”

“China Girl”

“Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” (my God, I think I just threw up a little in mouth just typing that one)

“(I’m Only) Human” (man, I hate that one)

“Shy, Shy” (funny: just texting the name Kajagoogoo alone is worth sending…)

Still good stuff.

Just some really (really) lame music.

And it was all played a couple of weeks ago at my high school reunion (I can’t even begin to go there yet because I’m still processing the visuals from it).

Maybe soon though.

Tina Drakakis blogs at Eyerollingmom and was just featured in the Boston production of “Listen to Your Mother: Giving Motherhood a Microphone.” Her work has been featured in NPR’s “This I Believe” radio series yet she places “Most Popular 1984” on top of her list of achievements. (Next would be the home improvement reality TV show of 2003 but her kids won’t let her talk about that anymore). A witty mother of four, she takes on cyberspace as @Eyerollingmom on Twitter and Eyerollingmom on Facebook. –

Kid-Free Vacations: Parenting Guilt or Brilliance?

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I just returned from a short vacation, not only without the kids, but – for the very first time – having left them home alone without adult supervision. Before the speed dialers hit the DSS hotline, I guess I should point out that 50% of my dependents are, in fact, (cough) adults. Well, as per their official documentation, they are. Legally, I was good.

Quasi-adults or not, I’m not going to say it was without stress. Quite the contrary, in the days leading up to departure I think my hair started falling out more than normal and a queasiness in my belly was brewing. Graphic headlines taunted my dreams: Selfish Parents Perish in Plane Crash … Kids Left Alone Arrested for Stealing Snacks, Claim Partying Parents Left No Food … Party House Sees $20k in Damages for Negligent Owners.

Good God. What was I thinking?

For the record, I challenge my husband frequently on daily matters both big and trivial – you name it, I will argue it: parenting issues, furniture-placement, even which appetizers to order in restaurants. But when he was doing his best to convince me of a solo jaunt more than six months ago, well, it didn’t feel like much of a fighting matter because there seemed to be more pros than cons. We’d gotten a super cheap deal on both lodging and flights, our eldest would be turning 21 by summer’s end, and the remaining 3 were primarily self-sufficient (bathroom hygiene notwithstanding but I imagine with teenagers that issue won’t be disappearing anytime soon, eh?). Besides, our neighborhood watch is stellar and my kids knew it: my phone would rival the Batphone should any shenanigans arise.

But six months came quickly and by the time I should’ve started packing, I still wasn’t so sure I was comfortable with the decision.

“My parents left me alone for a week when I was a junior in high school,” my husband countered. I just gave him the face (cue in knowing nod from all the wives out there).

I cooked for days, typed and retyped a multitude of lists, texted every neighbor within earshot of my address and threatened every one of my spawn with their own personal Achilles Heel of punishment. If Project X was going to happen in my absence, livelihoods were going down, one body at a time, dammit. It would be a race to the rat-out of epic proportion.

So we grabbed a couple of friends who like us, never came across a Happy Hour they couldn’t enjoy, and hopped over to Myrtle Beach for three days.

Now, Myrtle Beach is a fine and lovely place. It is also – in the middle of August – Africa hot. (Hence the need for Happy Hours in South Carolina? Coincidence? I think not.)

And three days isn’t a particularly long time – especially when you’re on the clock of Only Got Three Days – but hitting the ground running upon arrival helps.

We sat our sleep deprived selves in one lounge chair after another (by day) and one bar stool after another (by night) and amassed some amazing laughs in a mere 72 hours.

The kids called every so often and only one questioning text came in from the neighborhood watch. When I realized the house wasn’t going up in flames and no one seemed to be killing each other, I had to (popular song reference ahead) let it go.

We had a rental car but we jumped into nightly cabs regardless to do our part to be responsible. Turns out, my kids were doing theirs.

When we arrived back my daughter (19) audibly sighed with relief when she got in from work. “I am sooo glad you’re home,” she said, slumping down on the couch with me. Hmmm. This responsibility thing is exhausting, isn’t it?

My middle son (15) couldn’t wait to show me something cool.

“Mom, come here, check this out.” He was giddy.

He tapped the centerpiece fruit bowl, which contained a frightfully blackened banana and what appeared to be a couple of apples from the Clinton administration. Three thousand fruit flies shot up and swarmed crazily above it.

Nice.

Note to self: Despite the obvious, “Throw out rotting fruit” needs to get typed onto that list next time.

But alas, will there be a next time? Maybe down the road but definitely not for a long time.

I need to wait until my hair starts growing back in before even thinking about it.

How Long is 3 Years? Any Mom Can Tell You

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I lost my mom three years ago today and began marking the anniversary of her passing with some reflections about passing – time passing, that is. Most people don’t notice time passing in any given day but Moms certainly do.

Moms get it. We get it when we look down at our 8^th graders and see hairy man legs. Even though we’ve seen that gangly leg a zillion times it still halts our heartbeat for a second when we, you know, really see it.

We notice time passing when our 10^th graders start sporting sideburns and facial hair and we realize we never even saw it coming. One day it’s just, well, there. When did that start? we wonder. Geeze, we’d focused so intently on the deepening voice …

When the summer days start getting shorter moms become aware of time when our college coeds start gathering their things again. Already? Really? We watched them whizzing around for a few weeks, burning the candle at both ends (a mirror image of ourselves so many years ago) and then poof, they’re gone again.

We moms also give a knowing nod to the slow passage of time when our oldest children – kinda sorta adults in the making — start paving their own paths through life with or without our gentle suggestions. Having to watch mistakes being made — then figured out — oddly enough causes time to stall a bit (insert nervous laughter from parents living with young adults).

It’s pretty easy to see how moms become acutely aware of time.

This past weekend a big group of friends and I took a ferry over to Provincetown and spent a spectacular summer day carousing in the sunshine (and, okay, perhaps a few bars, too). It was a stunning day yet I had tiny moments of sadness throughout it because it dawned on me: the last time we all did this together was exactly three years ago. I know this so well because it was the one lone day of fun I experienced that summer before spiraling down the heinous rabbit hole that was my mom’s cancer.

I used to phone her on the weekends to catch up, telling her all about the kids’ games or what I bought on sale that afternoon or any frolicking I’d done with my zany friends. Sometimes I’d just pour a glass of wine and shoot the shit with her. She’d always turn down the volume on the Law and Order episode in the background and listen happily as I went on and on, blissfully content in the animated updates of my life with her beloved grandkids

That last ferry outing is seared into my memory because when I phoned her that evening to tell her all about it, for the very first time she was unable to keep up her end of our conversation. She was frail and whispering and I remember hanging up and sobbing. I knew: she was fading away from me. Our special phone thing was never going to happen again. Within days I was back with her in New York, where I didn’t leave until her horrific ordeal was over, just weeks later.

I remember every moment of our final phone conversation.

156 weeks have flashed by and still my maternal awareness of time flares at the most unexpected times.

Today, the dynamic of my family is dramatically different than it used to be three years ago. Now a household of teenagers and young adults, it is, if I’m being honest, a much lonelier place for me. Mind you, it’s not a sad place – quite the contrary – it’s busier than ever and full of laughs (ahem, hilarious at times) and as chaotic as any other family of six usually is. But as Dorothy Gale once said, “People come and go so quickly around here.” That tends to happen in a household of primarily self-sufficient bodies. Work schedules, college distance, school events, social commitments, you name it. Family dinners are a rare occurrence now and more often than not there are nowhere near six people under the roof at any given time.

Everyone’s so busy they’re hardly ever here anymore.

So sometimes it just gets a little lonely when I remember about that pesky – and fleeting – time thing.

It makes me appreciate car rides. And conversations. And calendar pages with few markings on them.

And it makes me feel wickedly sneaky frying bacon for the sole purpose of waking teenage boys out of weekend slumbers.

And it makes me acutely aware that small moments are very, very good.

And — without question — it makes me vow that forever … if I happen to get a phone call from one of my loves that is afar … I will turn down the volume of Law & Order and listen up.

And be very, very happy.

Just the way my mom was.

One Year

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My mom died a year ago today.

I’ve written – briefly — about some of that journey but have mostly focused on all the beautiful friends that buoyed me afloat during that time. But to write about the experience as it affected my core? No. To quote a colleague who went through a similar ordeal just a few years before me, “Nope, can’t even go there yet. Cannot go there.” I understood it completely and still do. There are no words yet.

A lot can happen in a year’s time. Hell, a lot can happen in half a year’s time, as witnessed by the soul splintering timeline of my mom’s final six months.

To honor this subdued – yet utterly important and significant – anniversary I can reveal what I’ve learned about calendar years.

In one whole year you can witness your 17-year-old son become 18 by making a conscious and physical decision to leave behind the poor choices that saddened his mother so. You can watch him become a responsible man right before your very eyes and question why you ever doubted him.

In a year’s time you can watch your 16-year-old daughter become 17 by navigating relationships (relationships that seem to desperately define adolescence) with the grace and maturity of a woman far beyond her years. You can think that she couldn’t possibly become any more beautiful with each passing month. But you would be wrong.

In 365 days you would believe it is a devilish trick of the eye that has caused your 12-year-old’s shoe size to surpass that of his father as he reaches 13 years old. To share this fact with him, you could look up to tell him, for he now leans down to kiss you. This will make you amused. And melancholy.

In a calendar year you can observe your baby – for he will always be your baby – blossom from 10-years-old into an even more likable, adored, and sought-after pain in the butt 11-year-old (have I mentioned he’s the youngest?). You will realize that his personality is emblazoned from seeing – and hearing – more than his siblings did at this age. For this, you will continue to shield him from their merciless taunts, so that forever they will think you are favoring him.

Throughout the 52 weeks you can ascertain that life most definitely is NOT fair, nor is it supposed to be. My sister and I now shoulder the responsibility of caring for our 90-year-old step-father. That he has survived four strokes, emphysema, open heart surgery, a pig valve AND was 20 years senior to my mom will only bolster this concept.

In twelve months you can gain immeasurable wisdom about what is important in life. You can evaluate friendships with a keen eye: assess which ones are fulfilling, which are frivolous, and which are insufficient.

You can – and will – enjoy simpler things, and quiet moments,

You can – and will – laugh (please see above mentioned reference to 90-year-old man).

I used to pray. Now I just speak directly to my mom and I know she hears me. I am convinced that last month, before my little leaguer hit his very first home run of his life, it was my incessant and silent pleas to her that helped this ball over the fence. “Come-on-mom, come-on-mom, help-him-out-mom, come-on-mom, help-him-do-this mom …”

She did. And I think she’s done a lot for us this year. Jobs, health, happiness, you name it. I’ve named it: mom.

I miss her.

I miss just talking to her.

And she missed some pretty great things this year.

Of course she really didn’t miss them. We just missed her joyful reaction to them.

So as we’ve gotten through our calendar year of firsts — her birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, her anniversary, and – the worst — her 10 grandchildren’s birthdays, when their customary $25 arrived with only one signature on the card – we’ve always toasted her.

And we will today, too.

Because no one is laughing more than her right now at the three-ring circus she’s left behind (please see above reference to 90-year-old man). Without a doubt in my mind, she is laughing her ass off right now.

Love you, Mom.

Look Away Kids, Grandma’s Naked on the Internet. On Purpose.

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I own four children between the ages of 13 and 20. Two college age and two teenagers (good times at that supermarket checkout, eh?) so I consider myself a bit well, seasoned. While little sends me into a complete tailspin, I have to admit, keeping up the façade of a hipster mom is tough work. There are some things I just do not get.

Crazy, controversial pop stars? I totally get them. Hard as she tries, little Miley and her rebel tongue can’t hold a candle to my generation’s Sinead O’Connor and her moment of blasphemy … or our Michael Jackson and his evolution of weird … even the evil Madonna and her hairy armpits (and hey! those unruly pits are back – and she’s like, 60! You go gurl!). So I get the nutty need for spotlight and notoriety. Twerk away, you silly, silly children.

But what I don’t get is Chris Brown. Specifically that he takes a stage and is greeted by tens of thousands of adoring fans and is publicly embraced by his famous colleagues. For real? I don’t get that. At all. Never will.

I get the craze of do-it-yourself projects (says the – cough – reality TV has-been) … but I don’t get Pinterest. I see it as a junk drawer of activities and recipes that will never see the light of day, kinda like a failure cupcake frosted with optimism.

I get helicopter parents (because I personally know a boatload of teenagers that couldn’t place a coffee order correctly let alone apply to college without help) … but I don’t get “affluenza” as a legitimate means of defense for murder. Popular theory says entitlement is a pretty big problem with generation x, y and zzzz-ers but – good God –if parents are raising children without any modicum of remorse or accountability, perhaps then the parents should do some time.

I get that the internet has become this gigantic billboard for personal achievement and in-your-face braggadocio and (shrug) I think that’s fine. I’ve been known to post some good fortune — or better, the elusive I-don’t-look-fat–in-this photo once or twice (cue in collective eyeroll from spouse). Over the top bragging isn’t a crime (and some days it’s downright hilarious, thanks to all the folks who haven’t yet realized their kids aren’t as cute as they imagine) so I’m a fan.

But.

And this is a might big but.

I do not – and can not – and will not – ever understand the act of average people using the internet to post unbelievably awful and (wait for it …) NAKED pictures of themselves.

Funny story about how I might know this:

Being of a certain age, I’ll be the first to admit social media is a herculean task. The tweets, the shares, the posts, the blog, the tumbles, the hashtags, the pictures, the OhMyFreakingGod, staying visible and relevant on the damn inter-web is a full-time freaking job. For a generation that wasn’t born sucking on an I-Pad, mastering all this crap is really the pits.

Still, I trudge on, every month or so tackling another little tidbit of cyber success. I get myself on Twitter or set up a Tumblr account, whatever I can learn on my own (because hello, there’s only so much once can ask her kids before losing massive amounts of street cred). So yay me.

But the problem is, I’ll do all this techno trailblazing and then sorta forget about it all for awhile. So I basically have no idea what’s going on with any of this stuff. My hipster-O-meter drops into the danger zone during these times.

But every now and then I’ll become inspired and will check on all my accounts. At first I’d simply chuckle at my X-rated Twitter followers. Why HotCumDelight would want to follow Eyerollingmom is a mystery to me, but hey, a follower’s a follower. Why should I care? Woo Hoo, my 49 fans just jumped to 50! Yay me AGAIN!

One day (out of boredom? curiosity? a bathroom break? can’t remember) I actually clicked on a follower from one of my accounts and was shocked to the point of revulsion. Porn site, you ask? Nope. Worse.

It was a place where average women posted naked selfies of themselves. I’m talking naked and knowing – as in smiling at the camera – in all states of lewd poses. Women of all ages (shudder, Golden Girls included) happily allowing another person to take their nasty naked picture. Then posting it onto the world wide web.

It was sickening. I kept expecting to look over my shoulder and spy Rod Serling.

It scarred me so deeply I had to stay off my laptop for almost 30 minutes.

If seeing granny’s gems or Aunt Sylvia’s stretch marks is going to keep me hip, sorry folks, it’s back to Nerdville I go.

Ick, ick, ick.

Tina Drakakis blogs at Eyerollingmom and was just featured in the Boston production of “Listen to Your Mother: Giving Motherhood a Microphone.” Her work has been featured in NPR’s “This I Believe” radio series yet she places “Most Popular 1984” on top of her list of achievements. (Next would be the home improvement reality TV show of 2003 but her kids won’t let her talk about that anymore) A witty mother of four, she takes on cyberspace as @Eyerollingmom on Twitter and Eyerollingmom on Facebook. –

When it Comes to this Mothering Thing, Who’s Better at it: You or Your Mom?

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I never talked back to my parents. Yet my own kids talk back to me. A lot.

My children also raise their voices to me when they’re angry. Think back: would you ever?

Worse still, I often have to tell my spawn to do something multiple times — multiple times —because my continuous requests are repeatedly ignored. Can you even imagine?

As another Mother’s Day approaches I can’t help but reflect on how remarkably different I parent than my mother did. When I dig deep I have to admit: there are times I feel completely overrun by the people in my home that are less than half my age. I don’t think my own mother ever felt that way one day of her life. In fact, she wouldn’t put up with one minute of what I tolerate from my children.

Does that make me a worse mom than her?

In all fairness I should throw it out there that my kids are not rotten. Not in the least. And never have been. They were never the tantrum-throwing toddlers in the restaurant, or the give-a-pinch-when-a-grown-up’s-not-looking schoolyard brat or the current topic of conversation in the teachers’ lunchroom (didn’t know about that? oops, spillin’ secrets here). They happen to be the epitome of respectful individuals when out in the real world and are quite well liked. Actually, if I’m being completely honest I’d have to say they are, in fact, fairly boast-worthy children.

So why do they shit on me?

Usually after a particularly bad display of disrespect from one (or two, or three, or all four) of our kids, my husband and I will have conversations about this, scratching our heads (okay, maybe while downing beers). We question how in the world we got to be parents of children who easily display behavior that would’ve resulted in a swift backhand from any – and all – of our own parents.

We think back and remember the fear in our homes and the physical repercussions of any type of conduct unbecoming. It certainly wasn’t unusual back then. Actually, it was very, very typical. We all did what we were told – the first time – because it far surpassed the alternative of NOT doing so.

But there is no fear in my own home today. There is no apprehension for questioning or stating opinion or disagreeing. It gets loud, sure, and at times inappropriate, but no one’s ever hesitant about speaking up.

There are other blatant differences in my home now that speak volumes to how very different my parenting style is from my mom’s.

For instance, my kids talk to me way more than I ever talked to my mother at their ages – about cringe-worthy topics that would zap the frost straight out of my mom’s bouffant. Eighth grade girls doing decidedly un-eighth grade things in the way back of a bus on a school trip? Sixth grade classmates experimenting with drugs? You name it. Details are anted up without pause, over nightly bowls of pasta or during car rides to practice. Like, nothing. No big deal.

Also, my kids tell me they love me – all the time and for no particular reason. My first distinct memory of saying “I love you”— out loud — to my mom was from a payphone in the middle of a dormitory hallway during my freshman year in college. As I am forced to go through my third Mother’s Day without her, my heart still gets heavy when I think of this and my regret pains me. It was way, way too late in life to have started that.

No doubt about it, my kids are being raised in a different world entirely. My mother didn’t socialize with my friends’ parents. I would venture she didn’t know most of their names at all. She didn’t come to many school events and never checked to see if I was doing homework.

If I had to make a list, I’m pretty sure I’m involved in a gazillion more things with my four than my mom ever was for me.

Yet the loves of my loins – all of them – have moments of intolerable selfishness, insufferable self-absorption, whininess, rudeness and petulance. And – why hold back now — they occasionally swear.

So I do wonder: Who’s done a better job at this mothering thing, me or mine?

What do you think?

With all her failings, my mother’s love for me was ferocious and I knew that every day of my life. She raised kind, smart and capable children.

With my own failings, my love for my children is ferocious and they, too, know it every day of their lives.. I am raising kind, smart and capable children.

I’d say we both win this one.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of us – the successful ones, the failing ones and the holding-on-for-dear-life ones. We got this.

Tina Drakakis blogs at Eyerollingmom and was just featured in the Boston production of “Listen to Your Mother: Giving Motherhood a Microphone.” She takes on the cyberspace @Eyerollingmom and Eyerollingmom.