Necessity

Necessity is the mother of invention. I'd heard that saying a million times but it took on new meaning when I became a mother. Mothers do all sorts of things out of necessity. One time, a friend of mine was getting her daughter ready for Picture Day at school. Her daughter had chosen a hand me down dress that they had received from a friend and my friend had approved the choice without close inspection. As she helped her get dressed, however, she found that the shirt had an enormous stain on it. No problem. She found another shirt that would work. Then, as she was buttoning up the back of the dress, she realized that there were buttons missing. She was faced with a dilemma: remove the child from her chosen outfit and risk a tantrum (not to mention the time all of that would take) or make it work. She made it work. She sewed her daughter into that dress. Sewed. Her. In. That is some impressive problem-solving. Once, when I was five, my mother and I were at a softball game with some of her friends. All of the kids went over to this hill behind the field and began sliding down on our bottoms. I was the lucky kid that slid over a piece of glass and cut my butt badly. Blood was running down my leg and I limped over to the bleachers to show my mother. My mom looked at me as if bloody children were always approaching her and, without missing a beat, reached into her cooler of beer and grabbed a handful of ice to clean me up. Then, she rooted around in her purse for something to put on it and found a roll of tape. My mother then taped shut the giant gash on my ass.  She knew it wouldn't hold up too well so she told me to sit still until the game was over. That is some hard core parenting there. I still have the scar, by the way.

I don't have a lot of stories in which I am impressively clever (like my friend) or impressively tough (like my mother). Well, once when we were out at a restaurant, my daughter had a fecal incident and I had no extra clothes for her. I sat in the bathroom, head in hands, pondering my options for quite some time before the solution came to me. I fashioned her a loin cloth of sorts out of a styrofoam take-out box. Alright. I didn't really do that but, oh, how awesome that would have been. No, the only thing I have done out of necessity was pull the car over, shove my 2 year old son's penis in a water bottle and tell him to pee because there was no bathroom in sight and it was below freezing. Everybody does that so I know it is nothing special. The truth is parents do many little things to get through difficult situations with our kids. I'm sure there are some spectacular stories out there...let's hear them.