Year of the Diva

Feel free to skip over but I wrote this today for an upcoming show about bad mommy moments.  Enjoy, you motherfuckers:

One Bad Mutherfucker

My name is Jessi and it has been 2,153 days since my last full night’s sleep.  Even when there’s no wet diaper or milk emergency, even when I don’t have to perform a makeshift exorcism on the clothes monster in the corner that looks like Lady Gaga’s meat dress under the sun of the Serengeti, my body is so accustomed to waking up every night like a prisoner of war, awaiting a waterboarding.

This lack of sleep has caused several lapses in good judgment not the least of which was accidentally getting pregnant only 6 months after having my first child, a lapse of judgment that resulted in a beautiful boy and brought more joy and many more sleepless nights than I can recount.  But this is not about the unexpected joys, glorious moments or reasons to be alive that motherhood uncovers.  This is the story of one woman’s slow decent into madness and subsequent trash mouth that ensued.

I come from a long and distinguished line of cursers.  Somehow, I instinctively knew the difference between home words and school words and never the two should meet.  As a child, I never cursed, but as I grew, so too did my vocabulary.  In college, I majored in linguistics and was able to not only embrace these deliciously illicit words; I was able to heighten them to academic import.  My senior thesis was on the morphology of the word fuck.

Years passed and language shifted, as it does.  My use of Fuck birthed many of my favorite words: fuckery, fuckarrific, the Jewish themed, fuckowitz, and my favorite: fuckchops.

Then my friends started having kids and I was put in the time out box.  Don’t say FUCK in front of the B-A-B-Y.  I had to become master of my own domain.  Please, bitch, no problem.  Of course it wasn’t a problem then— I was getting 8 hours of sleep and was in total control of my own faculties.

Jump to April, 3, 2008—the day my life would never be the same; the day I gave birth to my perfect daughter, Lilith.  Everything was going swimmingly with my language because, you know, that’s what good mommies do.  Good mommies sound like a combination of Gloria Steinem, Princess Leia and Dora the Explorer.  My daughter would be well-read, her language would be advanced, flowery and there would be no hint of gutter mouth to be sure.  And then, the sleeplessness hit in.  I never yelled at my kid, I never hit her, I never fed her orange crush from a bottle—ok, I did once rub her gums with tequila when she was having a particularly bad bout of teething—I mean it was top shelf tequila, but in general, I was doing ok on most fronts…most fronts but one.  Every time I dropped something, I would say, shit.  Every time my perfect daughter would shit her perfect diaper and perfect green explosive diarrhea would ooze out of her perfectly pink polkadotted leggings, I would rush her to the changing table, or floor of the sushi restaurant, whatever…saying, fuck fuck fuck!  It was an instinct, I guess a tiger can’t change his fucking stripes and I didn’t realize it was a problem until I heard my 11-month old daughter drop a toy and say, in the cutest, highest little voice, “oh shit.”  My eyes grew wide and I ran over to her, I said, “doodle,” that’s what I call her, “Doodle, we don’t say oh shit, we say, uh-oh.”  And I took the toy and dropped it literally 10 times, each time saying “uh-oh.”  I thought we were cool.  What the hell kind of mommy was I that my 11-month old was using the word, “shit”, a slightly proud mommy, to tell you the truth that she was using it in the correct context, but NO, NO NO!, I couldn’t be that person—what would people say?

So, after that bout, I curbed my language again and was extra vigilant.  Yes, I was running on 16 minutes of REM but I would not have my daughter fall victim to my own shortcomings…yeah, that lasted about 2 months.

May 11, 2009: a day that will live in infamy for me and 30 other unsuspecting strangers.  It was my birthday.  My husband was taking a class and I had to bring my daughter home on the metro.  I was 7 months pregnant with my son and exhausted, but used to this metro ride as we took it a few days a week with the same commuters.  Usually the trip was uneventful, I mean, there was the night that all of Washington, DC found out we were racists when Doodle pointed to a picture of Tiger Woods in the Post and yelled, Obama!  But in general, we kept to our business and the commuters kept to theirs.  But on this fateful night, my birthday no less, Doodle decided to reenact a scene from Crouching Toddler, Hidden asshole.  She crawled out of her stroller and wanted to walk around the moving train.  Aside from the snide, ‘control your kid’ looks that the disapproving 20-something (I’ve never touched a child but could raise one better than your incompetent ass) hill-workers were giving me I was fucking 7-months pregnant.  It was like an elephant seal trying to catch an eel.  I would waddle one way, she would slither the other way, until the train jerked, I tripped and proceeded to have an out of body experience.  It seemed to happen in slow motion and the words poured out of my mouth about 3 octaves lower than my natural speaking voice:

You fucking motherfucker—get the shit back here and stop being such a total and complete asshat!

So there it was, out in the air—hanging like the stinkiest fart in the smallest elevator.  Doodle just looked at me, smiled and started laughing.  I however knew that we could never take the train again and began doing long division in my mind figuring out how many taxis we could take home using our retirement fund.   And yet, something was freeing—that smile that Doodle gave me, it was a knowing, thank you. She seemed to be saying, this is you, Mommy and I love you for who you are.  I looked at her sweet, perfect laughing face and picked her up, hugging her, apologizing but also thanking her for being so amazing.

From then on, things changed, not just with me but with her too.  A year later, we were at Max’s Jewish Kosher Restaurant.  The clientele ranges from religious to zealot.  My 1-year old son Magnus was fighting with Lilith over some stuffed toy.  I got frustrated and said, that’s it, neither of you are playing with it.  There was a 5 second silence followed by a 2 year old screaming at the top of her lungs, FUCKING HELL!  It’s ok, I actually find Max’s food too salty for my taste.

A few weeks ago, we were over at my brother in law’s.  He was giving Lilith a bath and dropped a toy.  Immediately, a tiny voice in the tub explained confidently, “Uncle Greg, when we drop something, we don’t say, oh shit, we say uh-oh.”  Wow, my daughter really does listen to me!  She has also been known to call especially hipster bands on Yo Gabba Gabba, douchebags, hey—is she wrong?

And yes, even at 3, Doodle knows the difference between home words and outside words and has been pretty smart about navigating her way through her mommy’s minefield of a lexicon.  I have however prepared myself for the day when I get a call from the principal, telling me my brilliant, beautiful daughter just called someone a fuckwad.  I know EXACTLY my response:

“Well, is he?”