![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/terrible-mother-300x161.png\" "\\"terrible-mother\\"")
Have your children ever accused you of being a terrible mother? Mine never did in those exact words, but they\u2019d reminisce about my less-that-stellar performances. Last Mother\u2019s Day the \u201cTerrible Mother\u201d title reared its head when one of the five felt the urge to retell one of those episodes.<\/p>\n
We packed all five children, ranging from nine months to ten years, into the family van for the yearly trip to the ancestral domain inWisconsin. Unable to afford a motel for the eight hundred mile trip, we left at two a.m. determined to drive straight through. The kids slept until eight a.m. and by breakfast we had three hundred peaceful miles behind us.<\/p>\n
We piled out of the van, tromped into the road stop restaurant and after breakfast encouraged everyone to use the restroom. While my spouse filled the gas tank, I changed the youngest child\u2019s diaper, rolled up the sleeping bags and waited for the older four to hop back in. Our car slowly edged away from the pumps.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom, Scott\u2019s hanging on the door outside,\u201d remarked nonchalant ten-year-old Mark absorbed with colored pencils.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho?\u00a0 Where?\u201d\u00a0 I barked, twisting in my seat to see where Mark was pointing.<\/p>\n
As the car crept from the gas pump, we gazed, mesmerized, at nine-year-old Scott running alongside, both hands gripping the rear door handle.\u00a0 Astonished and fascinated, as though viewing a slow-motion movie, we stared as he continued to keep pace with the car.<\/p>\n
Hubby bellowed, \u201cWhat the\u2026?\u201d and slammed on the brakes, muttering something about my inability to count children.<\/p>\n
No one was buckled up (hey, this was the \u201860\u2019s) and except for the nine-month-old secured in his car seat, the rest catapulted forward until they collided with an unmovable object.<\/p>\n
One child unlocked the door and Scott scampered in. Incredibly, no one seemed unduly alarmed, including the runner. He rummaged through his sack of toys for his army men, accepting the incidence as a byproduct of large family living.<\/p>\n
We did notice Scott made certain he was first to dash into the van after future pit stops.<\/p>\n
Happy Mother\u2019s Day to all the rest of you \u201cTerrible Mothers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Have your children ever accused you of being a terrible mother? Mine never did in those exact words, but they\u2019d reminisce about my less-that-stellar performances. Last Mother\u2019s Day the \u201cTerrible… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22882"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}