Read Motherhood, The Second OldestProfession for Free Online Page A

intimacies as, “I low long does it take you to wash that mop?” “How are you financing your shampoo these days?” “Did you know Attila the 1 Inn once wore that style?”
    There was absolutely no rapport between us. His hair had been the only thing that had kept us together . , . the only common ground of communication we had.
    I began to remember the good times . . . the time we ragged him about his hair on a vacation from Gary, Indiana, to Salt Lake City, Utah. The time really flew.
    I recalled the time I told him I had enrolled him in a Miss Radial Tire competition and he had won.
    Oh, I tried new lines of communication like, “You live like a hog,” “There is no boy so tall as the one who stoops to pick up a towel,” and “Don't ruin your dinner with that junk!” But somehow it wasn't the same.
    We had lost that wonderful hostility that parents need to relate to their children.
    Then one day he came home from school and my face lit up. “What's that disgusting bit of hair around your mouth and chin?”
    “I'm growing a beard,” he said.
    “And sit at my table, you're not. I cannot believe that's the chin I used to spend hours wiping the saliva and oatmeal from. Why are you doing this to your mother?”
    “I'll keep it trimmed.”
    “Hah. You show me a man with a beard and I'll show you what he had for lunch. It smells like pizza right now.”
    “All the influential men of the world have had beards, like Moses, Christ, and Burt Reynolds.”
    “You forgot King Henry VIII, Lenin, and Satan. I'll be honest with you. You look like one of the Seven Dwarfs.”
    “I knew you wouldn't understand,” he said, slamming the door.
    At least the beard would take us through Christmas vacation.

Unknown
    11
    What kind of a mother would...
    wash a measuring cup with soap after it only held water?
    Sharon
    Everyone said Sharon was a terrific mother.
    Her neighbors said it.
    She painted the inside of her garbage cans with enamel, grew her own vegetables, cut her own grass every week, made winter coats for the entire family from remnants, donated blood and baked Barbara Mandrell a doll cake for her birthday.
    Her mother said it.
    Sharon drove her to the doctor's when she had an appointment, color-coordinated the children's clothes and put them in labeled drawers, laundered aluminum foil and used it again, planned family reunions, wrote her Congressman, cut everyone's hair and knew her health insurance policy number by heart.
    Her children's teacher said it.
    She helped her children every night with their homework, delivered her son's paper route when it mined, packed nutritious lunches with little raised faces on the sandwiches, was homeroom mother, belonged to five car pools and once blew up 234 balloons by herself for the seventh grade cotillion.
    Her husband said it.
    Sharon washed the car when it rained, saved antifreeze from year to year, paid all the bills, arranged their social schedule, sprayed the garden for bugs, moved the hose during the summer, put the children on their backs at night to make sure they didn't sleep on their faces, and once found a twelve-dollar error in their favor on a tax return filed by H & R Block.
    Her best friend said it.
    Sharon built a bed out of scraps left over from the patio, crocheted a Santa Claus to cover the extra roll of toilet paper at Christmastime, washed fruit before her children ate it, learned to play the harpsichord, kept a Boston fern alive for a whole year, and when the group ate lunch out always figured out who owed what.
    Her minister said it.
    Sharon found time to read all the dirty books and campaign against them. She played the guitar at evening services. She corresponded with a poor family in Guatemala ... in Spanish. She put together a cookbook to raise funds for a new coffee maker for the church. She collected door to door for all the health organizations.
    Sharon was one of those women blessed with a knack for being organized. She planned a “theme party”