Mom in Training...With a Dog

          I used to have a little dog named Turbo. He was a mini Schnauzer and he died a few years ago. Adam has been talking to me about Turbo a lot lately and telling me how great it was that I got a puppy to help me get ready for being a mom.

            I did not get a puppy to help me get ready for being a mom. Adam can’t get his mind around the fact that I, in my younger years, didn’t like children and never, ever wanted any. I was almost twenty-eight when my oldest, Alex, was born and up to that point, I never wanted any kids. Ever. My oldest twin can’t accept that.

            We have talked many times about how having children made me a better person, the person I was meant to be, but I never had that inkling to be a mom. Adam is trying to find his way around this fact because he can’t see me as anything but his mom. I get that and that’s cool but his bargaining with me about why I had a dog is ongoing.  My children were planned out, (not necessarily having twins, that was hitting the jackpot-lucky) and I’ve told him that but he needs more.  

Nightly he brings up to me how nice it was that I had a little dog that I learned to feed and take care of so that I could learn to feed and take care of my babies. I’ve asked him if he recalls me putting him out in the yard to poop or remembers me pouring his food into a bowl in the corner of the kitchen. He does not recollect this ever happening and I tell him that it is because he was my baby, not my dog. I’ve tried to explain to him that taking care of a baby and taking care of a dog are two completely different things. He’s not accepting that. He remembers Turbo sitting on my lap and that he has sat on my lap before too. Okay, there is one similarity.

            I’ve been trying to tell my kid the truth, that people change as they get older and that’s what happened to me, a dog didn’t change me and I didn’t get a dog to teach me how to take care of my babies that I was never planning to have anyway. I got Turbo because he was cute and free and I liked him. He was easy to take care of and was not very demanding. I never got up in the middle of the night to feed him or change his diaper or his bedding when he’d had an accident. I just put him in the yard before bed and called it good.

            I guess I should be happy that my kid is trying to make me out to be a better person than I was. I should stop correcting him when he tries to make me out to be some kind of mom-saint person who took on maternal training early but I am nothing if not honest and I just can’t let him see me as that good all my life. I’m afraid that no other woman would ever compare to his momma and that will cause him trouble someday. I hope the girl he marries likes dogs, if not he might think she is a selfish young woman with no one to look after but herself…like his momma used to be, before I got a dog and a couple of kids.