June 17, 2005

When did I become my mother?

While I was sleeping

By Dona Nichols
Times Columnist

My mother has a tendency to find a gloomy side to everything.

A few months ago I treated her to a weekend at a friend’s beachfront house. While looking out the window to a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean, I asked, “Isn’t that beautiful?”

“Well, it’s OK I guess, but I wouldn’t want to look at it every day,” she said.

It’s safe to say that her glass of arsenic is half empty. She would do anything for you though. My dad used to say, “She would cut off her right arm for you. Then she’ll remind you of it every day for the rest of your life.”

I had difficulty sleeping when I was seven months pregnant with my first child. I whined to my mother, “I’ll be glad when this kid is born so I can get some sleep.”

My mom laughed. “Sleep? You won’t have a decent night’s rest for 40 years, and even then it won’t matter because you’ll be on your deathbed.”

I considered the source and quickly ignored her grim words. Yet nearly 12 years later, I’m sorry to say that I discovered she was right.

I quickly learned that children never get sick during the daytime. Croup, diarrhea and projectile vomiting are strictly middle-of-the-night burdens that all mothers must bear.

I also learned that fathers can sleep through even the most gruesome of nighttime interruptions, especially if cleanup is involved. Whenever cleanup is involved, the mess is always bigger if you’ve just laid new carpet.

And the size of a child is in direct disproportion to the size of the mess. In other words, the smaller the child, the bigger the mess.

During a visit to my mom’s last summer, all three of my kids got some kind of a stomach virus. My mother’s newly laid carpet still had that “new carpet” smell, but my children quickly changed that.

My husband was upset at my mom for being upset at the kids for having upset stomachs.

“I’ll never be that insensitive,” I thought to myself. The other night my 9-year-old daughter Alexis came into our bedroom crying.

“Mommy, I have an earache,” she said.

I snapped at her and said, “Why do you feel the need to wake up everyone in the house and announce it? Now butch up and go back to bed.”

I don’t know what came over me. I was so tired from 12 years of sleep-deprivation that I was unable to function as a caring and sensitive mother.

“Oh my gosh, it’s happened,” I thought to myself. “I’ve become my mother.”


Dona Nichols teaches journalism at San Jose State University and Evergreen Valley College and does stand-up comedy on the side at the Improv in downtown San Jose. She lives in Evergreen with her husband and three children.