Tommy – we raised him and we loved him…logically

Whenever motherhood got the best of me and I started to lose my “Mama-Mojo” you’d always build me back up by saying,

“Oh Hell, we’ve forgotten more crap about being parents than most people will ever even know!”

That always brought a smile to my face and I drew a ton of strength through the years from your unwavering certitude.

As soon as you were convinced my confidence was restored, you threw me back  into the lion’s den and left for work. And by “lions,” I mean our very own offspring and by “den,” I mean our very own home.

I don’t know how much actual skill or information we forgot, but we definitely forgot some of the more egregious faux pas we’ve committed in the name of preserving our sanity.  Which, by the way is an excellent argument for keeping old friends around. They have it all archived.

I was reminded of this reality just the other day.

Last week we launched the new book, “Lose The Cape – Ain’t Nothing But A Teen Thang”

http://amazon.com/author/agingersnapped

I did quite a few podcast interviews. On one of the last podcasts of the day, I was lying down, holding the camera at an odd angle and not wearing a stitch of make-up. The conversation may have waned…although this is me, talking about my favorite subject – ME, so I doubt the conversation waned too much.

Nonetheless, listeners were encouraged to text in their comments or questions to the interviewer. That’s when my bestie from Arizona chimed in,

“Ask her about the time they left Tommy at the hospital!”

Oh my…I had forgotten all about that.

I had to sort’ve remember the entire story on–the–fly as I was telling it. But, all the deets came flooding back in the telling.

I remembered you coming home from work and handing me an invitation to a restaurant opening. It was to be a chic spin-off bistro-style concept for an enormously successful chain. I definitely thought we should attend. Unfortunately, it was the day after my due date.

Not to worry! No Blanchard Baby had ever once voluntarily shown up on their due date or even remotely close.

Until Tommy.

Right on his stinkin’ due date.

Nailed it.   Mr. Punctual.

“Too bad we have to miss that restaurant opening tomorrow,” I sighed later that evening, as we gazed lovingly at our precious new little bundle of red-headed testosterone.

“Who says we have to miss it?” You responded, “He’ll never be safer again in his life than he is right here in this hospital. They have doctors, nurses and kick-ass medical equipment. We oughta just discharge you tomorrow, load up the car, go eat lunch at the VIP luncheon, shake a few hands, network a bit and then circle back and fetch the little fella!”

I wish I could go back and see the look on my face as my jaw dropped open. Appalled. Leave my baby at the hospital? After he had literally been a part of my body for 9 months? Why, the mere suggestion just flew in the face of everything instinctual about motherhood and childbirth.

And yet, it was hard to argue with the logic.

So that’s exactly what we did. We discharged me, asked the head RN of the nursery what time “late check-out” was for the little guy, went and had lunch and then came back to fetch him posthaste.

He was our 5th child. It was definitely not our first rodeo.

When we arrived back at Chandler Regional, they matched up the plastic identification bracelet I still had attached to my wrist with the plastic identification  bracelet attached to his tiny ankle and pronounced us “mother and son.” (Another friend suggested that they could have, alternatively, confirmed maternity by matching hair swatch samples.)

We were free to take the boy home and raise him as our own.

Which we did. Of course you were right, he was truly safer and in much better hands at the hospital.  But, as my mom always drawled, “We just loved the dickens out of that boy ever since!”

I know a lot of people have read a lot of books on parenting and attended many workshops on the topic, I think one of them might have even been called “Love and Logic.”  We never seemed to need those with you around.

It just always felt like, together, we were our own quirky version of Love and Logic.