Brett Berk

The Gay Uncle has been in this kiddie game long enough that some of the adorable toddlers he cared for and educated are now high school seniors, planning their post-secondary school adventures. He’s still in close contact with many of these awesome young people–now super-cool, politically active, artistic, pierced/tattooed/dyed urban teens–as well as their folks. Therefore, it wasn’t a total shock when he received the folloing note this week:

Dear Gay Uncle-
My daughter is leaving to attend college in the fall. I forgot who I was before I was “mom.”
Will it be like I have amnesia when she is gone? Because then I will have to be on a Soap Opera because that’s where all the people with amnesia are to be found.

Well, darling reader, Gunc feels the strain of your challenge. But he feels confident that you will not end up on the daytime dramas. People don’t end up on there with amnesia until they’ve been on the show for some time–often decades–and then they get all high-falutin’ and think they’re more important than the other characters and demand a huge pay increase, and the producers retaliate by having the writers kill them off in a big accident, and then the fans rage, and the star gets all falsely-humble, and they bring them back by pretending that the whole killing off part was a mistake and they were just seriously injured, but part of their brain was damaged and now they’ve forgotten all the annoying parts of their storyline and personality, and everyone pretends to love them but is secretly plotting against them. And you haven’t been on the show for any duration, so you’re safe. But he also wants you to know that, like this imaginary soap star, you can never go back to being who you used to be, so that dream is both uninteresting, and a waste of time. You need to be the new De-Mommed you. His advice is to email some of your family members, former colleagues, and old friends and ask them to send you some simple one or two word descriptions of what you used to be like before you had a child. Then you can use these as a means of getting in touch with your old self, in order to help create your new self. Here’s what you do. Collate all of these emailed descriptors onto one list, and then sort them out into the following three categories: Revive, Change, Avoid. For example things like “insufferable drunk” or “selfish bitch” might be good ones to place in the Avoid column, “excellent listener” or “great movie-going partner” might be ones to put in Revive, and “inhibited painter” or “afraid of anal” might belong in Change. Voila, a roadmap to your Personality 2.0.

Also be aware that Momming is for life. So while your daughter’s immediate, present tense, and proximal needs for you may change some, you will still need to be her parent in a new and terrifying way. (Remember your own behavior in college.) Plus, given the state of the economy, it’s very unlikely that she’ll get a job after school, so it’s only a matter of years before she living with you again. Gunc says, Cherish your freedom while it lasts.