Maria Housden

This morning there was a note in my inbox with a link to this story: What Kind of Mother Gives Up Her Kids? What do you think? She asked me.

I’m in a ridiculously bad place with our daughter away at camp, so the obvious answer is a bad one. This week’s news (please make it stop) is all about Michael Jackson and Debbie Rowe’s children, and as a mother watching Debbie Rowe. Well, I can’t make sense of it.

I can’t comprehend not wanting to be with my kids. I can’t understand not aching to be with them. I can’t make sense of women who want to work outside the home, because by noon I’m pretty much ready to get my kids out of school or camp or wherever they are so that I can hug and kiss them and play with them.

Oh, except for the days that I can’t wait to shake my kids. Like the day I hid in the bathroom pretending I had diarrhea so that I could finish up a novel, or the day I hid in my closet and told my husband I was cleaning it, but I took a nap. There’s the time I got out of the shower, naked with shampoo in my hair and packed the three of them to take a trip to Palm Springs. I just wanted to be alone in my house. I enjoyed that break.

There are days that I just want to pull on a pair of pantyhose and join the workforce.

So I’m wondering if Maria Housden is a bad mother, or if I’m just jealous, because she gets to live the life she wants, and seemingly her children don’t resent her.