Smotherly Love™ :
I Know Where Your Buttons Are and I'm Not Afraid to Push Them

There are 16 true stories in Smotherly Love™ -- all based on personal experience or personal interviews and told in "she said/she said" style. Here's one of Debi's favorites.

Working Mom Goes Postal

"Housework can’t kill you, but why take a chance?"

—Phyllis Diller

She Says . . .

Ernestine (mother)

Don’t be fooled. Sleepy retirement villages in the country have plenty of drama. I know. Not only was I the pastor’s wife but also the postmaster and the mother of teenage girls. Sometimes I dreamed of escaping to someplace quiet and peaceful, like inner-city New York.

As the sole employee at the post office, I worked ten hours a day—and not just sorting mail. I had to fend off a steady stream of old men who fell in love with me. One geezer gave me candy bars from his greasy pocket. Another brought a bouquet of green onions. Still another asked me on a date while his wife was in the hospital and also sent me flowers, letters, and gifts. When my refusals finally penetrated his thick, bald head, he just smiled and said, “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.” I had to bite my tongue to keep from replying, “Right. I’ll just look for a pair of baggy overalls drenched in Old Spice.”

One day the town closed due to a snowstorm, but you know the postal creed. I put in twelve long hours of mail sorting and paperwork in addition to fielding phone calls about the weather, advising how much chili powder to use in a recipe, and rejecting offers to keep old men warm.

What helped get me through was the hope of a hot meal waiting for me in a clean house. After all, my girls had two friends over to share the snow day, and certainly they’d been sweetly conspiring to surprise me. My daughter Theresa had probably cooked one of her specialties: baked chicken. Or meat loaf. Or lasagna.

At last I returned home—tired, cold, and hungry. I stepped in from the garage to the kitchen and heard three words that flipped my switch: “What’s for dinner?”

Theresa had not made baked chicken. Or meat loaf. Or lasagna. All she made was a mess.

OK, she had some help.

Dirty dishes covered every surface in the kitchen, the cabinet doors hung open, and the trash overflowed. Board games, clothes, pillows, soda cans, and bowls of popcorn littered the living room. In the middle of it all, the four girls sat on their lazy behinds, staring at me like clueless baby birds waiting to be fed. So I did what any normal working mother would do: I came unglued.

I turned on the dreaded Griffin Glare. This family skill, passed down from my great-great-grandma Griffin, bores holes in offspring with a single look. After I spoke with a new degree of elevation in my voice, some door slamming occurred and I retreated to my bedroom.

Inner-city New York was looking better all the time.

She Says . . .

Theresa (daughter)

My mom loves to tell this story, and it’s pretty much true. Notice I said pretty much.

Tammy, my sister who had come home from college for a few days with a friend of hers, is really the one at fault here because she was older and should’ve known better. Me? I was just a sophomore in high school who hadn’t left the farm yet.

Besides, Mom is missing the big picture here: snow days are not regular days. They’re vacation days. Who in their right mind works on vacation? Let me think. Oh yeah. My mother works on vacation.

Tammy and our friends and I hadn’t spent the whole day sitting around, as my mother assumed. We cooked pancakes, eggs, and cereal for breakfast; phoned some friends and talked about boys; made soup and sandwiches for lunch; went outside to sled and make snow angels; came in and made hot chocolate and popcorn; watched TV and played cards; and then baked chocolate-chip cookies and talked about diets. Obviously, by the time my mom came home, we were just as tired as she was. Come to think of it, we were more tired, but she was too clueless to notice. She just shrieked, “What have you girls been doing all day?”

Always one to be helpful, I jumped in to answer first: “We played cards, and went sledding, and—”

She inhaled deeply, a sure sign she was about to lock and load the Griffin Glare.

“You girls have destroyed this house! I raised you better than this! What were you thinking?”

Note: any question asked during engagement of the Griffin Glare is rhetorical. Do not answer it. That laserlike stare has been used by higher-ups in the Griffin clan for generations to let others know when they’ve done wrong. Estrogen-fueled Griffin women are particularly skilled at this and can, with a single look, drill to the very core of your soul.

It is not pleasant.

“You girls—and your guests—cannot have one more thing to eat or one minute of sleep until this entire house is shipshape from stem to stern!” Nautical talk from Mom is a sure sign of impending doom, so we leaped up and started cleaning while she stomped down the hallway to her bedroom.

After she slammed the door, we all agreed on two things: (1) Mom has a serious problem with overreacting, and (2) we need to move a lot faster when we hear the automatic garage door open.

How Would You Deactivate the Daughter’s Clueless Button?

a. Hire the school’s home-economics teacher to tutor your girls privately for the entire snow day. (They’ll love the personalized attention.)

b. Send Theresa via overnight mail to her grandma for a more intensive treatment with the Griffin Glare.

c. Threaten to take photos of the debris and show them to prospective boyfriends.

Debi Says . . .

Dear Ernestine,

I’d send you sympathy flowers, but you’d probably assume they were from yet another adoring old man and throw them in the trash. Instead, I’m naming this outrage after you so that any working mother hence who comes home to a similar scene can say, “I’ve been Ernestined!”

This is a classic case of dashed expectations. Dashed, crashed, mashed, and smashed. You expected your girls to clean up after themselves and to serve you dinner. The girls expected a reprieve from the normal house rules and you to serve them dinner as usual. None of this was explicitly communicated. Hence, not only did you and your girls experience hurtful disappointment, but I got to use the word hence again.

To avoid a repeat, try this:

God Says . . .

“In the morning, O Lord . . . I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation” (Psalm 5:3 NIV).

Help Me Say . . .

Dear Lord, sometimes I am so busy that my mind produces expectations faster than I can assess or communicate them. This is not a good thing. I need your help to make talking strategy with you first and my family next part of my daily routine, just like brushing my teeth or making coffee. Please empower me to do so with calmness, flexibility, and a smile! Bring unity to our family so that we work and play with equal joy and love. Amen.

Copyright 2007 Debi Stack; exerpted from Smotherly Love™: I Know Where Your Buttons Are and I'm Not Afraid to Push Them (Thomas Nelson Publishers).

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