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Motherhood & Enron

Motherhood & Enron By Alison van Diggelen You can't escape the crooked E these days, can you? OK, it is the collapse of America's seventh-largest corporation, but I think part of the fascination lies elsewhere. It feels damn good to gloat at these rich Enron guys who gouged California last year as they get their comeuppance, doesn't it? But if we're a tad more honest than Kenneth Lay, we'd also see a bit of ourselves as the story unfolds. Truth is, we all have some deceitful, conniving, self-serving bones in our bodies. I know I have. We may not all have a whole fleet of servants to help us get through the day, but we're all human beings and God knows, mothers are often more human than most. Today I'm coming clean. This is my declaration of dependence on unsavory mothering practices, my cheating, my bribery, my full confession of mothering deficits. For starters, bribery is a common tool of mine. More than six years of motherhood has allowed me to fine-tune my bribes to exactly the right inducement for each child. For my daughter, a mere chocolate chip cookie will move mountains, while for my son the Golfland boondoggle is highly productive. Shredding superfluous artwork also has occurred in this house. Incriminating evidence often has been uncovered in the recycling bin by my little artists. I frequently plead the Fifth on this one, due to the delicacy of the subject. I routinely commit irregularities and shortcuts in my dinner preparation. My much-neglected recipe library gathers dust on the shelf. I leave it to others to handle the cookbooks. Frozen Tyson Chicken Tenders are a regular fallback, especially when my accountable partner is traveling for days on end. Recently, I even ... drum roll ... took part in a complex deception scheme of moving all the clocks in the house forward an hour to get the kids to bed before I passed out. This happened to coincide with the aforementioned long business trip. At other times, I've worked in collusion with my partner on accounting cover-ups designed to hide major capital expenditures, especially around Dec. 25. "Where did all these incredible gifts come from?" I've heard myself say. I've also been known to deceive trusted partners and ignore glaring problems needing urgent attention. Like Lay, I don't have much stomach for messy stuff and delegate this responsibility to my subordinates. I'm talking, for example, about the dead bird that our cat, Lucas, kindly placed on the garage mat last week. Rather than attempt to rectify the situation I waited until the cleanup team (my husband) came home from work, then shrieked, "Look what the cat just brought in!" and pointed in mock surprise at the feather-filled garage and gently rotting carcass. Yes, mothers like me will stoop low to avoid getting our hands dirty. I've often been economical with the truth. Making full disclosures can be just so tricky sometimes. Last month, when I served up a pasta dish and my guests oohed and aahed and asked for the recipe, I didn't rush to confess that it was straight out of a Safeway Select jar, with a handful of mushrooms thrown in for good measure. I let them believe what they want to believe; that I'd been slaving over a hot stove for hours instead of chasing after my kids. If any of this goes on in your house, best keep mum about it. If we mothers all come clean on our Enron-housekeeping practices, this could bring down the hallowed state of mothering as we know it today. And then what would become of dividend time on Mother's Day? © siliconmom Alison van Diggelen is the editor of siliconmom.com, a forum for mothers in the high-tech world.

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