When Did I Get Like This?

It grabs you right away with the title, doesn't it? I just finished reading When Did I Get Like This: The Screamer, The Worrier, The Dinosaur-Chicken-Nugget Buyer & Other Mothers I Swore I'd Never Be by Amy Wilson. Wilson is a writer and actress with an off-Broadway show about motherhood, as well as a contributing editor to Parenting, and mother of three. In this mothering memoir she confesses how, over and over again, she has fallen far short of perfection in all the ways that pretty much every mother falls. The tension and inevitable collapse between her high expectations and the messiness of life with kids provides endless opportunities for reflection and honesty and, in the end, humor maybe most of all. Because this book is funny. From birth plans to Facebook to preschool politics, Wilson's experience of motherhood (despite living in NYC as most of us do not) is totally relatable and will have you cringe-laughing with recognition again and again. Though I think Wilson herself would probably cringe to be labeled "wise," with her oldest child only 6 years old and many mistakes to be made ahead, there is wisdom aplenty to be found here amid the laughs.

There are too many great moments to quote them all, but I picked out this passage because I love Wilson's defense of mothers, who are looked down upon socially because "mommy" stuff is generally thought to be boring by our culture:

But why shouldn't we mothers talk about our lives, even when among the childless? Hell, there's a lot to discuss, and most of it is a lot more interesting than the articles we wrote for law review. Just because a topic is grown-up doesn't make it interesting; I once talked to an astrophysicist who bored me to death. But I didn't groan inwardly as soon as he told me he was an astrophysicist, thinking, Oh God, this guy's sure to be a snore. The entire topic of motherhood is considered not worth one's time unless one is a mother, and maybe not even then. Motherhood is still seen as a waste of a smart woman's mind, as if motherhood were beneath her talents, rather than the job that most requires every ounce of strength and ingenuity that she possesses. How each mother negotiates that is, in my opinion, a topic of endless variety.