Motherhood, The Second OldestProfession Read Online Free PDF Page A

it, it breaks?
    What if my loose tooth wants to come out when we're supposed to have our heads down and be quiet? What if the teacher tells the class to go to the bathroom and I can't go?
    What if I get hot and take my sweater off and someone steals it? What if I splash water on my name tag and my name disappears and no one will know who I am? What if they send us out to play and all the swings are taken? What do I do?
    What if the wind blows all the important papers that I'm supposed to take home out of my hands? What if they mispronounce my last name and everyone laughs?
    Suppose my teacher doesn't make her D's like Mom taught me?
    What if the teacher gives a seat to everyone and I'm left over? What if the windows in the bus steam up and I won't be able to tell when I get to my stop?
    What if I spend the whole day without a friend?
    I'm afraid.
    WHAT MIKE SAID:
    “See ya.”
    WHAT DINA DIDN'T SAY:
    What am I doing, sending this baby out inio the world before the umbilical cord is healed? Whcrc's .ill the
    relief and exhilaration I'm supposed to feel? If only I hadn't been so rotten to him all summer. “Go play! Get out of the house! Take a nap! Why don't you grow up?”
    I think I blew it. I talked too much and said too little. There are no second chances for me. It's all up to someone else.
    Now it's my turn. My excuse for everything just got on that bus. My excuse for not dieting, not getting a full-time job, not cleaning house, not re-upholstering the furniture, not going back to school, not having order in my life, not cleaning the oven.
    It's the end of an era. Now what do I do for the next twenty years of my life?
    These walls have been so safe for the last few years. I didn't have to prove anything to anyone. Now I feel vulnerable.
    What if I apply for a job and no one wants me?
    What if changing toilet paper spindles is my maximum skill?
    What if I'm kidding myself about writing the book that I told everyone is inside me?
    What if I can't let go of my past? It's only 8:15 in the morning.
    I'm afraid.
     

Unknown
    7
    Pacifier Pioneers
    A group of mothers was discussing the ten most significant contributions to the quality of their lives one night. Most of the suggestions were quite predictable: penicillin, fire, electricity, the automobile, not to mention The Pill, polyester, and ten-foot phone cords.
    I don't care what women say, the number one choice for me is the pacifier. How many women would be with us today were it not for that little rubber-plastic nipple that you jammed in a baby's face to keep him from crying?
    Today, it's as much a part of a baby's face as his nose or ears, but thirty years ago the pacifier was considered a maternal crutch, a visual that screamed to the world “I can't cope.”
    I was a closet pacifier advocate. So were most of my friends. Unknown to our mothers, we owned thirty or forty of those little suckers that were placed strategically around the house so a cry could be silenced in less than thirty seconds. Even though bottles were boiled, rooms disinfected, and germs fought one on one, no one seemed to care where the pacifier had been.
    We found them under beds, buried in sofa cushions, thrown in ashtrays and lost in the garbage. No child ever got sick from “fooler around the mouth.”
    I kept the pacifier a secret from my mother for as long as I could. But one day she dropped by unexpectedly and demanded, “What is this?”
    “It's a pacifier.”
    “Do you know that if you keep using this pacifier, by the time this baby is four years old, her teeth will come in crooked and her mouth will have a permanent pout?”
    “Do you know, Mother, if I do not use that pacifier, I may never permit her to become four?”
    We American pioneers of the pacifier have given it the respectability it deserves. After all, what other force in the world has the power to heal, stop tears, end suffering, sustain life, restore world peace, and is the elixir that grants mothers everywhere the