Mother of the Year?  It should be me!

By Ilyse August

Mother of the Year . . . what a truly magnificent award to have bestowed upon oneself.  Yet there must be SO many women who

 sincerely designate themselves the winner.  Ultimately is it a question of how many children one has, or the children’s’ propensities to drive the particular mother up the wall and over the top and down the other side? …or quite possibly, does this Mother of the Year award go to the stay at home mom or the mom who balances that all too familiar controversial mothering act of full time career employee as well as mother? Oh my….putting all of this aside, I can honestly say without any doubt that I feel I not only deserve this fabulous award, but I need it .  I simply need one night away from my role as mother.  Are we allowed to count our husbands as one of the kids as well? Because then I’m at 4 boys. 

The actual job of balancing the need for unequivocal equilibrium in the family unit as well as the work area takes a G-D awful amount of strength, and we ALL KNOW G-D is a woman now, don’t we?!  Moving forward I do believe women are an incredible breed.  There’s just something about us that we know we can and we must do whatever is on our plate and whatever needs to get accomplished.   With not one, but three baby boys all in diapers for some time, I knew early on that I was in for it.  Perhaps it was my mother’s dire look on her face when I became pregnant when my first son was just about 10 months young.  I couldn’t understand AT THAT TIME the implications of an eighteen month difference of age.  However, mother sure filled me in on why I was off my rocker.   As the years progressed and my husband’s sister committed suicide, followed by the death of my mother from ovarian cancer, it was one hardship after another.  All while I was just trying to survive myself while raising 3 difficult sons.  Difficult because of so many omnipotent reasons and issues we all face – the spoiling – do we let the child cry in the crib? Do we give in to this, to that? Do we punish when appropriate with all the proper consequential essentials? Are we on the same page with our spouse? Are we having financial difficulties which inadvertently determine our patience levels, as well as abilities to entertain and ‘buy’ our children self-entertaining activities?  So many determining factors as to how we can best cope with our own situations.  

Two out of three of my sons fall on the Autism spectrum which is a huge cornucopia of extremely difficult, but at times, quite amusing instances of personality misalignments.  All I can say is that I don’t know how I have made it through the first sixteen years!  In the early years it was clothing and bedding tags needing to be ripped out before even noticed, to spatial challenges, to ODD (oppositional Defiance Disorder,) AHDH/impulsivity, OCD (so many to list,) and of course some which I am to blame for,  as well as just general  and typical fighting.  I have worn so many different hats over the years.  Police Officer and Referee being the ultimate jobs on top.   However, when I think about it, maid and cook are really even above those listings.  Of course not neglecting the taxi cab driver and clothing connoisseur .  Let’s see . . . just a few more titles: seamstress, child advocate (FL schools we’re talking here!), psychologist, which thankfully I took many college courses in – albeit my husband never did and it certainly shows!

Somehow I was always the mom in the young years whose home the play dates were held at, and whose home the play dates mothers seemed to forget their kids at.   I remember one play date in particular with a girl my preschool son was friendly with whose mother not only didn’t show up at 1pm when she said she would for ‘our’ play date, but didn’t show at 3pm, or 5pm either to pick up her darling children.  By the time it hit 6:30pm, I literally had to tell this mom that her daughter would be left at the park we had visited if she didn’t show up! Yes, there were times I even had to be brutal with the other mothers who were so disrespectful by their opulence of taking advantage of another mother. 

As the years continued, so too did I in being that mom who was the ultimate doormat for all the other moms who saw an opportunity to take advantage and ran with it.  Ran the other way that is! As fast as they could!!  It was me who schlepped all the kids to the beach, to the movies, to the bowling alleys, to the museums, zoos, play pit playgrounds, you name it….I WAS THERE!  With nary a break I must add.  From day to day from month to month, year to year, this was my life and with my oldest now turning 16, I can honestly say I have never been away from them for one night.  Oh wait, yes I have.  The night I drove for 3 ½ hours to Orlando, FL to help my husband with an entrepreneurial dream, and then the next day drove back home to the monsters.  Surprisingly we even had to turn down a free trip for two to the Cayman Islands, which my husband won from a radio call in contest.  The in laws refused to come down to Florida and spend 4 days with the 3 kids.  They knew what they were in for – can I blame them?  I have not gone on vacation since 1999 when I was pregnant with my third son – not even for one night. 

What my salary should be? $112,962…hmmmm…according to Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb from The Today Show along with Salary.com, this is the figure they suggest a mother would make if she were paid for her work.  I wonder what Leslie Bennetts, the author of the book The Feminine Mistake, would say about this figure.  Bennetts is a proponent of the belief that often mothers make grave mistakes by giving up their careers outside of the home to be full-time homemakers.  I wonder what she would say to this amount being stated as what a mother is worth?!  I can’t imagine she would agree with it. 

After reading that book, I became so much more enlightened with this ongoing war of mothers against mothers.  IF only we can all respect that each of us makes our own decisions based on so many varying factors and it’s just such a conundrum to offer it up as one way being the right way when it comes to raising our kids.  Personally, there is no doubt that being a full time mom is incredibly difficult, but in my children’s young years, I didn’t have that option to embark on a full-time job because the pay wasn’t commensurate with daycare costs.  I chose to be a stay at home mom and earn money through VO (Virtual Office) opportunities.  Sometimes when you can’t get away from all the difficulties of raising three boys, it is truly so much harder.  I often dreamed of being this full time worker to get away from the total chaos of raising three boys and dealing with all of the incredibly frustrating moments that F/T motherhood brought on.   To which I say, let’s raise our glasses now because tomorrow I begin a new journey of F/T work.  I will be praying my three sons can figure out how to get along without the Police Officer in house.  

Formerly the Comedy/Charity Coordinator for The Improv Comedy Clubs of South Florida,  Ilyse August now works with nurses traveling the country looking for jobs in different parts of the country.  Raising three sons AND a husband, she is a very tired woman who comes home after long days to lie down for only 10 minutes because then she has to get her a$$ up to cook dinner.  She wonders how single women across the world do this.