Frumpy Mom: When do I stop being a mom?

I keep waiting for the statute of limitations to run out

OK, so here’s the thing about motherhood: There’s no statute of limitations.

When you contemplated becoming a parent, did you think there would be an end point? Some point beyond which the sticky, jelly-covered fingers couldn’t reach you?

Because I did. As I’ve explained in the past, I somehow missed getting the parenting manual where I’m guessing they laid all this stuff out.

I did have to take a whole lot of classes after work that were designed to prepare you for the maelstrom that can result when you adopt kids who’ve been jerked from their homes and shuffled around among strangers.

You learn unusual skills like how to deal with food hoarding. Kids who haven’t always had enough to eat tend to hide food in their rooms, greatly to the enjoyment of your dog Fluffy and any random vermin who might be sniffing around.

As you might guess, you would have a whole lot of angst and weird behaviors if you were forcibly taken from your family and plunked down among strangers. One of the exercises we did in class had us imagining that very thing.

So I paid rapt attention in these classes, because I wanted to make up for my total and complete lack of experience with anything to do with motherhood. Especially parenting kids who’d been through hell.

Even after the training, there were endless times after Cheetah Boy, 5, and Curly Girl, 3, moved in with me where I was gobsmacked as to what to do. Flip a coin? Run and hide in the closet? Scream? Play rock paper scissors?

Somehow, I kept them alive and the kids and I bumbled along for years, as they grew taller and more clever at outsmarting me at every turn. For example, their high school required students to wear uniforms, and this led to a fight every single morning, until finally they started to comply. I felt so smug that I had gotten through to them.

Foolish, foolish hubris. That was before I walked around to the side of the house and I found a pile of discarded school uniforms in the shrubbery. And I realized the kids were walking out the front door in the hated uniforms, and then promptly changing out of them to walk to school.

Seriously. Outsmarted all the way.

The thing is that somehow we all survived those horrible teenage years. The ones where they flinch when you touch them like you’re covered with nuclear waste. When they sneak out and steal your liquor and say things to you that make your mouth open so widely that you drool like a St. Bernard.

In those days, I used to mentally roll my eyes when my friends would fret endlessly about the fact that junior got a “C” in calculus, so how was he going to get into UCLA?

Meanwhile, my kids were … well, I can’t really tell you that. Those are their stories to tell. Not mine. Let’s just say every time we drove past the local courthouse, I’d look at the kids and say, “Gee, you know, some parents have kids who’ve never even been inside a courtroom.”

And they would laugh hysterically and shout back, “Yeah, Mom, but that’s not us.”

True that. Luckily, I’m resilient, because otherwise I don’t think I could have survived the way they pushed my buttons all the way down to the ground floor. Actually, no. Into the basement. In the dark trying to figure out what the heck to do. It was my very own personal “Scary Movie.”

I knew lots of other parents were going through the same thing, but the problem is that they don’t talk about it. They don’t want to be judged, and they don’t want their children to be judged, either, even if they made some big mistakes. So they just keep quiet and think they’re all alone, wondering if everything is their fault.

Here’s a clue: No, it’s not. Everyone just does what he can, and then you have sandwiches.

I have no idea when this occurred, but my kids mysteriously turned from teenage hellions into admirable, amazing young adults who are a pleasure to be around. I’m not exactly sure how this happened — I’ll have to rewind the tape.

But what I never expected that they would be 27 and 25 today, and the statute of limitations on being a mom still has not run out.

I actually really enjoy the fact that they make their own choices and if mistakes are made, well, at least they weren’t mine.

But I worry and fret about them, knowing that there’s not a stinking thing I can do about it.

My hardest moments nowadays come when I have to bite my tongue — a problem that’s been a perennial one since I was a teen myself.

I’m doing my best to sit back and enjoy the show. Maybe before my baby grandson is older, someone can give me a copy of that darn parenting manual.