MOTHER Failure!

I forgot my son at school yesterday. First time that’s happened. Oh boy, that kid was mad!

I totally forgot that he had a club meeting until 5:45 p.m.
I mean I completely and absolutely blanked… there was no feeling in the back of my head that I was forgetting something.
Not even a hint of a mother’s instinct that my young was missing.

I kept calling the house, angrily grumbling about Jacob not answering his phone.
Why did I get him that phone if he won’t even answer it, I wondered.
What could he be doing?
I was ready to let him have it when I got home.

I got off work at 5 and headed to pick up my daughter from after-school watch, as I always do.
As we chatted about her day, we swung into the drug store to pick up the necessities… wine and milk.
We wandered the aisles and added some meat sticks and hair clips into our basket.
I remember wondering again why Jacob hadn’t called me back.

We loaded up our new goodies and headed to the house.
Sitting at the stop light my phone rang.
It’s always a bill collector, so I ignored it at usual.
The stop light was still red so I decided to check my new voice mail.
I never check my voice mail but for some reason I did this time.

“Hey mom, you forgot me, didn’t you?” I hear my son saying.
Lord have mercy!
I may have uttered several curse words at this point.
I quickly hit Call Back on my phone and got a lady whose phone my abandoned son had borrowed.
I tried to sound calm and responsible… “Uh hi, my son just called me from this number?”.
She told me to hold on that he was running around and she had to flag him down.

Now at this point I wasn’t quite sure what to say when Jacob picked up the phone.
I pondered my choices… humble and apologetic or make up some great story about why I was late.
But before I could come up with a game plan I heard his voice.

“Hey Mom”.
I blurted “I am on the way! I am on the way!”.
And then I dug my hole even deeper.
“I totally forgot you had Lego Robotics on Tuesdays”, I say.
Now, what came out of my oldest child’s mouth next was completely unexpected.

He signed and said sternly, “It’s Minecraft Club, MOTHER!!!”.

He called me Mother exactly the way I used to call my mom that when I was furious with her.
He said it in such a way that he might as well have called me an total idiot.
I was a teenager when I started pulling the Mother card.
I remember the first time I did it and how weird and powerful it felt.
It’s kind of like calling you parents by their first names… It’s just not done but it feels amazing when you get the nerve to do it.

I have always been Mommy, Momma or Mom.
And then I realized my son is 12 and it was starting…he is not my little boy anymore.
It was a proud moment and for some reason I found it absolutely hysterical.
I was proud of him for standing up for himself and being ticked off at me.
I deserved it but in my defense I do have about 32 things going on at one time, every minute of the day.
I loved that he found a way to let me know exactly how he was feeling with one sentence.
It’s Minecraft Club, MOTHER!!! Awesome.

As I sped down the street, I explained to my daughter that I forgot her brother, which she thought was hilarious.
It was kind of like that moment in 16 Candles when the brother finds out in the hallway that the whole family forgot Sam’s birthday.
Remember?
I believe what he said was “Classic”. Yup. This was classic alright.

And that’s when I knew I had to start bargaining with Quincy.
Not only was she going to make the whole situation worse by laughing at her brother all the way home, but she had the one thing I needed as a peace offering.
A meat stick. And it was Teriyaki flavored, which his even better.

It took the entire 7 minute ride to Jacob’s school to take possession of the coveted meat stick.
When I pulled up and saw him, I knew it was the moment of truth.
I am not proud to admit that in desperation I may have waived the Slim Jim wildly at him in front of his friends.
He jumped in the car, grabbed it and looked at me as if I had lost my ever loving mind.
I think he even rolled his eyes at me.
We cracked up all the way home.