Judging Mommy

Judgy people have irritated me today, but first I have to get this out of my system.

FINALLYMERANDMCDREAMYGOTITRIGHT. THANKYOU!

I love a fairy tale ending. I couldn't be happier about my Thursday night TV experience. Except for the candle question. Where did she get all those candles? What, she just ran to Walmart and was all, 6000 bag candles please and the guy in the blue vest loaded the cases in her hatchback? I dispute that one person could get that many bag candles to burn at one time without a television crew to help them. The first candles would burn through their bags and start a meadow fire long before the last candles were lit. Even with this obvious plot flaw, sigh, beautiful. I'd sworn to give Grey's up if they failed to get together and I can now watch another year.

On to mean, parent-judgers. A friend of mine's 18-month-old has a mohawk. It's intentional, Dad has a mohawk too. A total stranger approached her in a store and asked how she could do that to her baby. AND THEN, this woman said that my friend was 'asking for her son to grow up and be one of those people.' Sounds ominous, doesn't it? Those people. Mohawk people? Because everyone knows about those mohawk people. Terrible, the way they're always up to no good, flashing those mohawks around. (I do really like the word, mohawk.)

Her story caused me to have a post-mother-judging-stress-disorder relapse related to an incident that occurred at a certain Mexican restaurant last year. I know you've all heard it before, but I'm going to tell it again because it haunts me.

In a desperate bid to get out of the house last winter (I'm talking February 2007 here, oh yes, I've held a grudge on this one), we took our two eighteen-month-old children to a local Mexican place for dinner. Ess had been home with us for only about four months and she was throwing vicious, outrageous temper tantrums regularly during meals, especially if anything sweet had the audacity to, you know, come to a natural end by being eaten. We agreed in advance that it was my turn to leave the restaurant with her if any part of the meal offended her by ending.

Desserts' end offended her deeply and she let us and everyone else in a three mile radius know about it. As arranged, I picked her up, carried her out to the minivan and buckled her in her car seat. For the record, it wasn't a fun trip through the restaurant. Conspicuous, pregnant white mom hauling screaming black child, even more noticeable than your average, oh so fun, restaurant toddler scene. Away from the offensive eaten dessert, she quieted. As I wiped her nose and talked to her, I noticed that she stank. I also realized I had left HSSH with a baby, two booster seats and a huge diaper bag to carry.

This is the part where I do something dumb. Recall, pregnant, tired, caring for two babies already, one of whom has known me for only four months. It hadn't been an easy four months. I locked the car and ran back in for the diaper bag. Half way across the restaurant dining room, a woman (notice I was nice here, I didn't say she-bitch from hell) stood up and yelled at me. She threatened to call the police if I didn't return to my car immediately. Loudly. Making sure everyone in the restaurant knew what a good citizen she was being.

Now before you go all 'serves you right' on me, I'm not defending the decision to run in for the bag. It was poor. I do not condone leaving children in cars - I mean unless you leave the window down and they have a bowl of water. Kidding. But on a scale of forgetting a good night kiss to abandoning baby in dumpster, I think this was on the lower end of the worst mothering of all time o'meter.

Her interest in my daughter's safety, I don't object to. What inspires my deep and abiding hatred about this incident is that this woman's main motivation was not my daughter, it was humiliating me, the mother. From her self-righteous pedestal of judgement, she felt, I'm sure, in the right to call me out in front of a room full of strangers. But, here's the thing. I WAS going back to my car immediately.

There was no need to threaten to call the police to get me back to my car. She could have ensured that the situation was safe for my daughter just as effectively by quietly watching me and making sure I went directly back to the car. If I had sat down and ordered a margarita, she could have just called the police. See how that resolves so nicely, without any soul crushing public beat down of an already tired, frazzled and on the edge mother?

Every time something brings this back up in my mind I get angry all over again. Not just for me but for every mother who has had a difficult situation made immeasurably worse by some know it all boob who probably doesn't have children because if she did have children, surely she would have just an iota of sympathy for how hard it can be and how easy it is to make a bad decision in the heat of the moment. She is seeing a snapshot of parenting under pressure and making the sweeping public judgement: TERRIBLE MOTHER. Mother worthy of police interference. How cruel.

I am a pretty confident person and that night bothers me over a year later. I want to travel back in time and tell that restaurant full of people about how hard I was working on bonding with my daughter, how I only buy organic milk and I stress about every decision I make for my precious kids. I want to tell them that I was tired. I want to tell that woman something too - that there are mothers out there struggling with serious problems like depression and her nastiness could easily have been directed at someone less able to deal with it.

What if she had dealt with the situation differently? What if she had been kind? What if, if she had really felt that strongly about the level of risk, she had walked outside and stood by the car until I returned? Isn't there enough guilt built into parenting without inflicting it on each other? Those parenting books we're all reading? The ones about using empathy to make your point instead of showing anger and frustration or employing threats and sarcasm? We can use them on each other too.