The Mommy Test

I found this posted as a bulletin on my MySpace, and I had to post it on here.

I was out walking with my 4 year old daughter. She picked up something off the ground and started to put it in her mouth. I took the item away from her and I asked her not to do that.

"Why?" my daughter asked. "Because it's been on the ground, you don't know where it's been, it's dirty and probably has germs" I replied. At this point, my daughter looked at me with total admiration and asked, "Mommy, how do you know all this stuff? You are so smart."

I was thinking quickly. "All moms know this stuff. It's on the Mommy Test. You have to know it, or they don't let you be a Mommy." We walked along in silence for 2 or 3 minutes, but she was evidently pondering this new information.

"OH...I get it!" she beamed, "So if you don't pass the test you have to be the daddy."

"Exactly" I replied back with a big smile on my face.


It does make you think, though, how DO we know all this stuff? We are entrusted with these little lives to take home and raise all on our own, we don't have to take a class, or a course, or prove to anybody that we can do it, they just hand them to us and say, you breath, you can raise. I have two of my own, and part of me wants another one if I ever get remarried, but I know I can do it because I already have.

But what about that first time I brought Arianna home from the hospital? Me and her father were both completely on our own, about to move from Alaska to Fort Riley, Kansas the day she turned two weeks old, I had yet to change a single diaper (she managed to time her changes to when the nurse had her for some reason or her father had her while I was in the bathroom) on this tiny body that I was petrified I was going to break in half just picking her up, and I had to fly her across the country and help her father find a new home, new car, and shortly thereafter, discovered I needed to find a care provider because I was coming back into the army as a reservist and needed a family care plan.

I had to learn from trial and error and hope that if I did screw up, that whatever I had did wrong would not hurt her so bad that I could not fix it. Hopefully, not a lot of people have to learn that way.