Author: Sheila Quirke

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My wish for mothers, everywhere.

I’ve two words for you, ladies:  Business.  Travel. 

If I could do anything for mothers everywhere, it would be to grant them all a twice annual business trip.  Just overnight, and nothing fancy, but time away from home and hearth.  It would soothe your tired soul and rest your weary bones.  It would restore your sanity and remind you of what is most important.  Exhibit A:

On Thursday morning, I awoke, helped Mr. Mary Tyler Mom get Mary Tyler Son off to the babysitter by 7:30 and kissed goodbye to the husband by 8.  Breathe.  I was not expected to leave for the airport until 11:45.  That is three hours and forty-five amazing minutes of quiet.  And solitude.  And space.  Alone in my own home.  Honestly, how many mothers get to experience that? 

I did laundry and showered me and my plants and packed.  Packing was a breeze.  Forget about the stress of wondering what you want to wear when.  You’re packing for overnight, girlfriend, you’ll be home tomorrow!  Pull on your airplane pants, pack your favorite dress, and you’re off.  I did forget the little 3 oz bottles necessary for carry-ons and that sucked.  I mean since when did a trip with kids NOT involve checking luggage?  I opted to forget the facial scrub and chance the extra dead cells.  Slough those puppies off tomorrow. 

At the airport there is just you and your carry-on.  Now mind you, I kept searching for where Mary Tyler Son had run off to, bad habit, but that was always followed by the relief of knowing I was alone.  The travel was smooth as pie.  No problems.  No little one to entertain for two hours.  No little one to fight over the iPad with.  No snacks in a diaper bag.  No strangers looking at me with contempt because my little one dare have a need or voice on an airplane.  Aaaaaaaagghhhhh.

I arrived late in the afternoon with nowheres to be until 9am the next morning.  I am anonymous.  I get to listen to what I want to listen to in the car.  No Wiggleworms happiness, for me, folks, just some station that plays M.C. Hammer and then John Denver.  I am loving life right about now.  Next I arrive at a hotel that I did not pay for.  It is impressively hip for Cleveland.  For reals.  Huge tee vee, though I opt to not even turn it on. 

Instead, I freshen up, and head to dinner and a movie.  I am dating myself, folks, and I gotta say, the attaction is instant.  I am one hot mother.  Out of the blue, an old friend calls while I’m at the bar sipping on sangria.  The sangria truly sucked, but who the hell cares?  I am at a bar, alone, feeling as cosmopolitan as one can in suburban Cleveland, which it turns out, is pretty cosmopolitan.  I laugh with my friend who worries she might be interrupting me getting dinner ready.  Ha!  Not my problem tonight.  After dinner I head to the movies.  I let my facebook friends decide what to see:  Super 8 or Horrible Bosses.  It’s Super 8 by a nose, and I am satisfied. 

Home to the hotel.  Hotel rooms alone are amazing.  Delicious, really.  I sleep, awake, miss my boys, but I’m off to why I came to Cleveland in the first place.  Work.  Hard to believe, but the work function was totally worth my while.  It was six hours of talk and discussion that will help me move forward on my next project.  There was actually a point to this trip.  Coolio. 

I zip back to the airport in the pouring rain, but I don’t care.  I am in my bubble of quiet and peace and solitude.  Get to the airport, appreciate the light flirtation from the Brit sitting next to me on the car rental shuttle, get x-ray’d in security, and don’t give a whit about the radiation I’ve just been exposed to.   My bubble rocks.  During a brief flight delay, another light flirtation with the architect sitting next to me.  My mojo clearly appreciates a night away from home.  Forgive me, Mr. Mary Tyler Mom, but it’s you I fly home to, you I will spoon.  I so used to envy my man for taking off on business trips.  Now I know that envy was justified.  

The 50 minute delay sitting on the tarmac at O’Hare upon arrival doesn’t phase me either.  That’s just 50 extra minutes of time to read without interruption.  I’ve already missed Mary Tyler Son’s bed time, so I’m chill.  When I do get home, I tiptoe into his bedroom and am met with the sweetest child in the world, my boy, clutching the love note I had left for him the day before, deep in his sleep.  He loves me.  He missed me.  I swoon.  This is so much better than flirtations with handsomish middle-aged British strangers. 

So that, ladies, is my wish for all of you.  An overnight business trip to Cleveland.  And you thought I didn’t love you.  I heart you all.

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Truth or Dare? I pick truth.

I started blogging way back in March of 2007, three days after my dear daughter was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor, and have been at it ever since.  Writing became a lifeline for Mr. Mary Tyler Mom and I, an almost daily, or more often nightly, ritual that helped us make sense of the hell we found ourselves in so very unexpectedly.  When you move to Cancerville and aren’t religious and the only thing you have faith in is one another and the love you share, the immediacy of the internet is intoxicating.

We wrote of our fear, our joy, our family, our love, our terror, our routine, our beautiful Donna.  Weirdly, people cared.  They wrote back.  They held onto everything we put out there and asked for more.  Even when Donna died, people read.  Even when Mr. Mary Tyler Mom stopped writing – – he is funnier and smarter than I am – – they still read.  Even when I spoke the truth about grief and pain and sadness that is unending, people still read.   For that I remain grateful.

In January, a few weeks after returning to work after four years of caregiving and grieving, Mary Tyler Mom came into being.  I wanted to write, but not only about grief, not only about Donna.  I wanted to write about working and mothering.  I wanted to be clever and sassy.  I wanted to be separate and distinct from my grief.  I wanted a new voice.  I wanted anonymity.  Voila!  Mary Tyler Mom was born.  She was witty and sassy and clever and hated Gwyneth Paltrow!  You know what?  Mary Tyler Mom was still sad, a little bitter, burdened with loss. 

It is what it is, folks.  Mary Tyler Mom is both sassy and sad, silly and mournful, snarky and sentimental.  I am her.  She is me.  We are one in the same. 

When you don’t see a post from me in a while it’s because I feel too sad to be sparkly and clever.  I’ve not wanted to burden this audience with the depth of what I feel and I’ve not wanted to disillusion my daughter’s journal’s audience with my swears and snark.  Quite honestly, it’s not unlike the Madonna-Whore paradigm. 

In Donna’s journal (www.caringbridge.org/visit/donnaquirkehornik), I am kind of a saint to a lot of folks.  Many of the readers I don’t know.  They tell me, often, that I am courageous, brave, a beacon of motherhood, and never with irony.  It’s a lot to measure up to, folks, I’ve got to say.  I mean, our daughter got cancer.  You do what you need to do.  I mothered her the best I could, but I made mistakes.  Lots of them.  Geez, I still hold my head in shame over the apple juice incident and how much my mothering sucked in those moments.  (Forgive me dear, Donna, I still struggle.) 

Mary Tyler Mom gave me the freedom to not be a saint.  To not be an inspiration.  To not be so freaking strong all the time.  She lets me bitch and moan just for the sake of bitchin’ and moanin’.  She let’s me judge under the guise of that aforementioned anonymity.  It felt good, but always a bit inauthentic.  The truth is, I’m Donna’s Mom and I’m Mary Tyler Mom, too.  I am strong.  I am inspiring, that’s right, I said it.  I am brave and courageous.  But I’m also small, and petty, and insecure.  I like a little gossip and a lot of snark. 

Today is my dear Donna’s would be, should be 6th birthday.  It’s been kind of a collision of my worlds for me.  When Donna died, Mr. Mary Tyler Mom and I started a charity to honor her memory and do good works in her name.  (You can find it here:  www.donnasgoodthings.org.)  Founding and growing Donna’s Good Things has been one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done.  I mean, since when does having a child die qualify you as a philanthropist?  For cripes sake.  Another cancer mom friend of mine who lost her son joked once, long ago, that when your kid dies of cancer, you’ve got no other option but to start a charity and start running 5Ks.  Guilty.  As.  Charged. 

But that’s part of me, too.  Anyways.  Today was Donna’s birthday.  At her memorial service I talked about how Mr. Mary Tyler Mom and Mary Tyler Son and I had to go home and start figuring out how to live our lives without Donna.  I’m still working on that.  Birthdays, for instance.  How on God’s green earth are you supposed to celebrate the birthday of a child you’ve buried?  A child you, yourself, personally, lowered into the ground?  Last year we tried a pizza party with friends and that sucked.  Super sucked. 

This year we decided to scale back:  A small cake for just the three of us.  A trip to the zoo.  A stop at Children’s Memorial to drop off some donations from Donna’s Good Things.  We also asked the facebook fans of Donna’s Good Things, all 592 of them, to post a photo of themselves wearing black to honor Donna’s memory – – black was Donna’s favorite color.  Seriously, how many four year old girls choose black as their favorite color?  Imma telling you, Donna was amazing. 

And the amazing thing is that people did.  People we know and people we don’t know took the trouble to wear black today, photograph themselves, then post that bad boy on facebook.  For a techonophobe like me, that’s asking a lot.  And people did it.  It started early – – the first one came in at 4:30 this morning.  The last one just a few minutes ago. 

There is something incredibly humbling and inspiring about the Donna’s Good Things facebook page today.  It makes me want to be better.  It makes me want to shout out to the world, “THANK YOU, WORLD!  WE ARE SAD AND GRIEVING, BUT YOU CARE!”  It makes me want to out Mary Tyler Mom. 

So I just did.  For reals.

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I’m Calling in Mom, taking a Mom Day.

Mary Tyler Son now hates Tuesdays.  Tuesdays are the day he goes to be with his “Auntie,” a/k/a babysitter.  It wasn’t always this way.  Why, I remember a time in the not too distant past where Mary Tyler Son barely batted an eyelash when I went off to the salt mines.  Not so much anymore and it’s wreaking havoc on me.

The past couple months, Tuesday morning rolls around and Mary Tyler Son starts to fuss a bit and says, “But I don’t want to go to Auntie’s.  I want it to be a Mommy and Daddy day.”  All the while looking at me with his big, baleful eyes.  Ouch.  Last week, returning from vacation, ten whole days of fun and sun with Mommy and Daddy, Mary Tyler Son threw an honest to goodness old school tantrum when it was time to go.  Mr. Mary Tyler Mom is who deposits the kiddo to Auntie’s, so I missed the worst of it, and by the time I picked him up at 5pm, he is sweetness and light.  Same for Wednesday.  Tantrums turn to happiness. 

This morning, Mary Tyler Son showed no signs of distress.  He played, I played, Daddy played.  He dressed, I dressed, Daddy dressed.  We asked if he wanted breakfast here or at Auntie’s and he giggled that he would eat M and Ms at Auntie M’s.  Clever is Mary Tyler Son.  And then the tantrum started.  From some deep, primordial place in his psyche, Mary Tyler Son realized I was off to the salt mines, Daddy was off to his salt mine, and he was off to Auntie’s.  As fierce and quick as yesterday’s storm, Mary Tyler Son’s tantrum erupted.  Word, people.  This was hard core.

Never before has a child of mine clutched at my neck screaming in my ear, begging me not to leave.  My dear daughter went through 31 months of cancer treatment without clutching at my neck, begging me not to leave her.  I don’t know what to do.  I know what I want to do.  I want to call in Mom.  I want to take a Mom Day – – kind of like a sick day, but with cookies and cuddles and playtime. 

If I ruled the world, working parents would get a bank of days to pull from when their kids needed them, when they needed a little extra something to get through their day.  Guilt free, no questions asked, a nice little bank of Mom and Dad days.  Cause days like today suck.  Poor Mary Tyler Son.  Poor Mary Tyler Mom.