The Mom Voice

A HistoryBy Joygerale
When a girl experiences a life-changing event, an event that so thoroughly alters her being that she can never again go back to being the girl she once was, one would think that she might at least remember said event. One would think that a girl in this situation would write the event down in her diary, especially if the girl was inclined to always writing down the minutiae of her existence.

With that said, I sadly admit that I did not document and cannot remember the first time that I used what would come to be known as The Mom Voice (TMV). I have vague memories of it escaping from my mouth at infrequent intervals in my younger days—mainly when I was babysitting. But somewhere along the line, I started using the voice enough for it to warrant the name The Mom Voice—although I wasn’t a mother at the time.

But now I am. And TMV has really taken hold.

Mind you, I’m not a biological mother; I’m a stepmother, which means that whatever I do, I must wield TMV softly and with great care so as to avoid the terrible and iconic affixing of “wicked” to my stepmother designation.

I must admit that I use the voice a lot. A lot. And I use it in conjunction with lectures. Seriously, the other night I linked childhood bath-taking to buying a house as an adult. I found myself actually saying:

Joy: Taking baths is part of learning responsibility. You have to do things like taking baths when you’re young so that you’ll know how to be responsible when you’re older so that you can hold down a job and buy a house. If you want to buy a house, you have to work every day, blah blah blah, lecture lecture, blahhhh.

Stepdaughter: Yeah, but nobody’s making you work.

TMV then prompted me to tell her that we could live in a ramshackle hut down by the river if her dad and I chose not to work. But I resisted and let the subject drop after I informed her that I wasn’t put on this earth to argue with seven-year-olds. Ah, TMV! Such a master of witty repartée.

I’m not sure that I can fully describe or define TMV. Half of the voice’s power comes from the speaker’s tone. It must be terse, pointed, and either shrill or guttural, depending on the situation. The actual words are not always of great import. For instance, I often hear parents use TMV in the grocery store to yell “No, SIR!” and “No, MA’AM!” to their children, as if giving them such mature titles would suddenly make them shape up. Not that I’m in a position to criticize. My own TMV expressions are often painfully clichéd. I’m all about telling my stepdaughter to “chill out” and “be cool.”

But the other half of TMV is somewhat magical. When I use TMV, I suddenly become privy to a wealth of knowledge concerning bedtimes, meal times, bath times, and all sorts of other times. I somehow know exactly how many cookies children should eat after dinner, which is strange given the fact that I can rarely figure out how many cookies I should eat after dinner.

TMV is my secret weapon. TMV makes me the omniscient oracle of all things orderly. Unfortunately, this omniscience does not spill over into my twenty-something life. Sometimes I wish that I could use TMV to direct my life path or something—to tell me that I shouldn’t sass a coworker or throw money away on tabloids. I’d like TMV to tell me when I’ve had enough to drink. But I don’t want to push my luck. Truthfully, I’m a little afraid of TMV. The voice is more powerful than I am. It rises from my subconscious and, at times, I feel that I’m not using TMV so much as it is using me to achieve its insidious child-rearing plan.

I am at internal war with TMV, especially when I’m telling my stepdaughter to do things that I think I should be telling her to do, even though I don’t know why. I employ quite an abhorrent level of practicality with TMV. I know that I’m fully justified in telling my stepdaughter that yes, she has to take a bath because she hasn’t had one in three days and come on isn’t it about time. And although I couch my practical moments with references to Sonic Youth or The National, I often feel like TMV sabotages the wacky and disorganized person that I know myself to be.

My big problem is, on the one hand, that I want my stepdaughter to have the basic training that she needs in order to be self-sufficient. I want her to have perfect manners and good hygiene. But on the other hand, I want her to let her hair down and have a good time. I want her to disregard TMV (gasp! shock!) when it behooves her to disregard it. When my back is turned, I want her to feed the dog from the dinner table and to make faces at me. Doing that shit is what childhood is all about! Even so, the voice rises again and again from my depths, and lo, it often punishes.

I am left, then, with the Herculean task of taming TMV so that I can use its full force at the appropriate times (as in the previously mentioned bath time situation) without letting it rule my life. I must learn to turn off the voice of my own mother! I must learn to overcome!

And I must remember to use chocolate as an incentive. For even TMV understands that a little chocolate-flavored bribery goes a long, long way.