The meeting with my editor at Live went just about like I’d expected it to—unfortunately. (Just once I’d like to hear the words, “We need to talk,” and have them be followed with good news, if for no other reason than to shake things up a bit.) Anyway, as you’ve probably all guessed by the fact that I have directed you to my website to read this column, Flag Live has decided to no longer carry The Mother Load. Which is fine with me. Really. The number of times I have been told over the years that “your column is the only thing I read in Flag Live,” has more than clued me in to the fact that Flag Live’s target audience and I parted company some time ago.
Still, even though I agree with their decision on the whole, I do take issue with the reasoning behind it: you see, the reason The Mother Load will no longer be running in Flag Live is that my kids are too old. “Clementine is in college now,” were the exact words.
I’m not sure if the thought behind that sentiment was that kids only “say the darnedst things” up until a certain age, or that after a certain point people don’t want to hear you talk about your kids anymore, but I must say that I take a bit of an exception to both of those arguments.
There is no age at which your children stop being your children. And, therefore, there is no age at which they stop being interesting. Or funny. Or frustrating, or endearing, or whatever the flavor of your relationship is that day. This is because, bottom line, the parent/child relationship will always be a relationship between people who so often don’t understand each other at all. Which, if you think about it, describes every relationship, ever. The difference between the parent/child version and other versions however, are, for one thing, the amount of grief we’re expected to take from our kids (it’s about quintuple what we’d be expected to put up with in a normal relationship,) and for another, the fact that for some reason we’re supposed to know what we’re doing when it comes to our kids. Which is laughable.
Hence the column. The continuing column. The one about my kids.
Think about it: there is no other relationship in our lives that we are expected to “get over.” No one expects comedians to stop riffing on their significant others, or their jobs, or even their customer service experiences. We all accept that these are ongoing, and often frustrating (and therefore funny) relationships. When it comes to your kids, however, there seems to be a certain point where you are supposed to “move on.” Embrace the “empty nest.” Return to your previous, “normal” life, now uninterrupted. And, of course, write about other things.
A few times I have been asked, “Do you really think the world needs another Mommy Blog?” (Strange, isn’t it, that poets are never asked if the world really needs “one more poem.”) And to that question, my reply has always been same: “I dunno. Guess we’d better leave that up to the world to decide.”
So here it is world, my latest column. You can decide for yourself if you need it or not.