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There is something sweetly rewarding about being needed by my son. In the midst of his hysteria, there is a quiet bliss in knowing that he knows I’m his mommy.

Happy Mother's Day!
by Lisa Baron

Micah has this new trick. Once I leave the room for some outrageous amount of time – like 20 seconds – whatever he’s doing, whether it’s playing, eating or gloriously banging two hard objects together, he will immediately stop and burst into a river of tears. I’m talking big fat crocodile tears that come complete with hyperventilating. And in case I don’t quite get the message, he adds the ever-popular holding of the breath.

For the record, neediness in a man has never been particularly attractive to me. I’ve always been a little more into the hard-to-get type. But there is something sweetly rewarding about being needed by my son. In the midst of his hysteria, there is a quiet bliss in knowing that he knows I’m his mommy. And being Micah’s mom is the best gift I could ask for this Mother’s Day. OK, and maybe a day at the spa and that brown leather handbag from Lisa Brown Atlanta.

A typical little girl’s room is lathered in pink flowers, red hearts and cottony clouds that spill into carefully traced multicolored rainbows. My childhood room had a terrarium filled with tree frogs and lizards. I wanted snakes, but my mom said no. Not because she didn’t want me to have snakes, but because she didn’t want me to have snakes in her house.

From an early age I wanted to be a veterinarian. I loved every creature, and it was my wish to ensure they were all loved and well cared for. I wanted to brush their hair, wash their skin, feed them the finest crickets or whatever it was they ate; I wanted them to thrive. My career path was set. That is until I figured out being a veterinarian also meant dealing with end-of-life issues. Something I am very bad with. If my dog, Jack, would’ve survived the crush of the UPS truck and the doctors had told me that he could be on life support, there would be a mini schnauzer hooked up to a ventilator in my basement, no question about it. Another thing I am very bad at – math. Being a doctor also involves a lot of math. So being a vet was out.

While I make his food, his bottle and his bed, and get his little body warm and toasty after a bath, he makes me
a mother.

Then I wanted to be a backup singer. I don’t know why because I can’t sing at all. If I had to get back into my tangled teenage brain, I would guess that it was because I wanted to wear the glittery outfits and high heels, and have access to a hair and makeup professional 24/7. Marrying a rock star would have been a nice perk, too. I’m assuming there’s very little math involved when you are a backup singer. Not being able to sing proved to be too big of a hurdle, though. No problem. I had already decided that I wanted to be a broadcast journalist. A total 180, I know. I dreamed of working for a major network. I, their top international news correspondent, would be dispatched to Italy to report on daily goings on at The Council of Ministers.

While roving, I’d fall in love with a Roman. I would tell him that, though I loved him, my first love would always be my job. His would be a string of European hearts I would break on my crusade to uncover the truth that my fellow Americans back home deserved. Along the way my ambition to report the news morphed into a desire to join the newsmakers, and while interning on a statewide gubernatorial campaign, I caught the political bug. So I followed this dream for a while, actually 14 years to be exact.

And then I met Jimmy. He was from Chicago, not Rome. We married and four years down the road of monogamy and matrimony, we made Micah. I remember sitting on the couch during the first three months of Micah’s life. I was so proud that I taught myself how to BlackBerry with one hand and pump from one breast with my free hand – all the while watching Fox News and simultaneously reading the ticker that crawled along the bottom of the screen. Talk about reaching some serious professional potential!

As I sat multitasking, I wondered what life would be like from here on out. I knew that as Micah grew, so would his needs. And while I will do everything to meet them, would my dreams, along with thousands of ripe Huggies, get tossed in the Diaper Genie, too?

He’s my baby, and when I had him he made me a mom, something I wanted to be as desperately as a veterinarian, backup singer and international news correspondent. And what I have found so far in the 11 months of being his mom is that mothering my child is, ironically, extremely self-indulgent and personally fulfilling. When I get Micah to laugh by tickling his neck or grabbing his squishy thighs, I almost feel guilty that I feel so happy. When I approach his crib in the morning and find him lying on his back studying his hands and feet, I want to jump in the crib with him and share in his new discovery. And while I make his food, his bottle and his bed, and get his little body warm and toasty after a bath, he makes me a mother. This is what I will think about on Mother’s Day while the massage therapist is kneading the kinks out of my back – not that my son is at home making the baby sitter earn every dollar.

– Lisa lives in Sandy Springs with her husband Jimmy.
To contact Lisa, e-mail her at LBaron@atlantaparent.com.