If you give a mom a cookie, she’ll ask whether you remembered to turn the oven off after you baked it.
When you say that you did—but she goes to check anyway, because you also said that you took off your shoes before you came in the house and you didn’t and you’d stepped in dog poop—she’ll notice an old piece of melted pizza cheese stuck to the bottom of the oven, smoking.
When she notices the melted pizza cheese, she’ll look for some steel wool to clean it off.
When she digs around under the kitchen sink for the steel wool, she’ll realize that you’re out of steel wool, and also that there’s a terrible smell down there.
When she realizes that you’re out of steel wool and also that it smells like fermented herring under the sink, she’ll log on to Amazon to buy steel wool, and will ask, “Is that Goop lady-parts candle fragrant enough to cover the smell, and can you buy it on Amazon?”
When she logs on to Amazon, she’ll feel guilty about using Amazon (“even though Frances McDormand made it seem not that bad”) and decide to drive to the grocery store instead. After all, she’s never heard of a store-bought candle exploding.
When she gets to the grocery store, she’ll grab some eggs and milk and also boxed macaroni and cheese. (“It’s O.K.—it’s the kind with a picture of a farm on the back and pasta shaped like rabbits. And the cheddar is white, not yellow.”)
When she goes to pay for the groceries, she’ll realize that she left her credit card at the café where her friend Susan told her she looked tired and then mentioned that crow’s-feet require only forty units of Botox.
When she calls the café from outside the grocery store, a barista will tell her that, yes, of course he remembers her. She was the one whose yogurt spilled all over the inside of her bag, so she needed, like, a hundred napkins.
When she thinks about the bag, she’ll vow to get it cleaned. And to get her hair cut. And to buy you new underwear. And to put more money in her 401(k), so that she doesn’t have to be a burden to you when she’s old.
When she vows to do these things, she’ll feel flattened by the weight of both her to-do list and her love for you.
When she feels this weight, she’ll look to the sky for a sense of perspective, and the smog will remind her that global temperatures are rising. She’ll wonder whether she should have biked to the store instead of driving—but her bike tires are flat, and the pump is in a cracked bin in the basement somewhere. She’ll add “find pump,” “blow up tire,” and “replace cracked bin” to her to-do list.
When she contemplates rising global temperatures, she’ll remember the burnt pizza cheese that she has to clean when she gets back home. She’ll ask herself why she has to be the one to clean it, and whether she should have put you in a Montessori school, where you could have learned, early on, the satisfaction of scrubbing. And how to prepare your own simple, wholesome meals, versus heating up frozen foods wrapped in plastic, which is probably leaching BPA into your developing brain.
When you give a mom a cookie, it’d better be a pot cookie.
