Dear Ms. Absent Mother,

Hello there! You wouldn’t know me from a hole in the wall, as I come from a different planet than where you call home. However, I’ve heard quite a bit about your species and would like to learn more about you in the name of morbidly curious research.

Let me begin by explaining a little about my kind of breed. You see, where I come from women get pregnant (planned or otherwise), give birth to a hopefully healthy baby, then spend the rest of their lives pampering, caring for, loving and supporting said child. We wipe off blood with our bare hands and scrub vomit off floors at 2 a.m. while reassuring child it wasn’t their fault they couldn’t walk the added four inches to the toilet. We’re the ones who hold them when they cry, swallow our vanity when they need clothes more than we do and chronically put ourselves and our needs last after theirs.

We also sacrifice the rare occasion of entire days off to play taxi, sit through softball games in the rain, watch dance recitals from nose-bleed seats, turn down invitations to parties for pajama time on the couch watching Care Bears and wash and clean people and things endlessly.

Here, we call ourselves moms.

Now I know nothing I just described sounds at all appealing. Here’s the really weird thing: none of that matters at all. We enjoy our roles immensely. It’s as if we’re programmed to fill the many roles to raise a healthy, happy individual.

Over the past few years I’ve been researching your kind intently. One way to describe my fascination with you and you’re breed is driving by a terrible, bloody, mangled car wreck and slowing down to be able to take in more of the scene. I figure the more I pay attention and absorb about you then the better my chances are for grasping your way of life.

Unfortunately, my thorough research has fallen significantly short of my goal. You see, the more I learn about you and your lifestyle, choices and excuses the less I grasp of your planet’s definition of reality.

Here’s where you may come in. I have several questions for you. I would greatly appreciate you taking time out of your busy life of self-service to answer them in as much detail as you can muster. If money for postage is an issue I would be happy to accept the paperwork via C.O.D. Here, you see, we have these things called Jobs that send money our way to pay for things.

Question 1. Sleeping Habits: On your planet, do you sleep at night, or are you haunted by images of children you’ve lost along the way? Sub-question: Can you see their faces clearly or are the lines blurred slightly from years gone by since you’ve laid eyes on them?

Question 2. Priorities: Do you have those on Planet Deadbeat? If so, how did the process of evolution there place offspring at the bottom of the list? Did they make the cut at all?

Question 3. Emotions: When you leave said children in the care of other beings and walk out of their lives, do you have any sense of remorse for ultimately changing the course of their lives? Sub-question: Do you feel anything at all? Emotions, as defined on Planet Mom, are things you feel from the organ beating in your chest. That organ is called a heart. Or, do you not have one of those organs where you live?

Question 4. Justifications: When people ask you (or when you ask yourself) why your kind abandons helpless beings who look just like you and want nothing more than their mom to love them, what do you say? Sub-question: Do you believe your answers, or do they ring just as flat in your own ears as they do to anyone who doesn’t live on Deadbeat?

I very much appreciate your candid answers to hopefully allow a further understanding about your species. I do hope your self-absorbed existence pleases you greatly, as it appears the cost of living on your planet is, quite frankly, astronomical.

I would also like to sincerely thank you for your shipping several members from your world to mine. Our recent immigrants have greatly enriched my own personal life and increased my quality of life exponentially. They have also found ways to grow the above stated organ (see definition of heart, above) that beats in my chest as well as many of the like-minded breeds around us.

Sincerely,

Ms. Evil Stepmom

— Elizabeth Reilly can be reached at elizabethreilly1@yahoo.com.