Motherhood Prepared Me for Rejection

No Mom! You're such a Boomer. Don't be a Karen. You have negative aura. 

The sighs. The eye rolls. The tea-kettle escalation from being asked to pick up their shit to full-blown screaming. I’ve heard it all as a mom of four. Nothing prepared me for motherhood, but having teen children has definitely prepared me for rejection. 

For five months, I parked my ass in a chair and ground out the chapters of Grief, Grace, and Garlic Naan, a travel memoir with a CIA hook I was sure would land a literary agent in weeks. Instead, I learned what every debut memoirist without a celebrity platform eventually learns: the market is not exactly a feeding frenzy. An agent is more likely to drink from the Ganges than devour buttery, delicious garlic naan.

Still, the writing made one thing clear: I’ve never felt more alive on the page, and I’m no quitter. Motherhood already trained me for that.

This week, between delivering consequences to my 15-year-old for sabotaging coaching relationships on the baseball diamond and golf course, and unpacking from a 3-day cross-country drive to Oregon with my 21-year-old to deliver him and his newly purchased used 2010 Kia to campus, I uncovered a treasure trove of recycling in our downstairs cupboards. Apparently, it was “Thirsty Thursday” during spring break, and the beer-fridge key was no longer classified “Top Secret”.

The Iowa vs. Nebraska basketball game was on, and my husband and teen left at home had been celebrating, one upstairs and one down. At least the Hawkeyes pulled out the win, and one of those beers was non-alcoholic. The 15-year-old, going on 21, now gets his driver’s license a month later this summer: one week per can. Frankly, that feels legally sound, based on his pattern of red flags.

Turns out rejection really is my middle name, because when I went back into that cupboard on April Fool’s Day, the message was loud and clear: Frick you, Mom.

As a mom of three sons, it took me a menopausal minute to realize the drawing was a middle finger and not a loaded weapon or yet another penis sketch. Honestly, he may want to stick to golf and not art. Luckily, it was April Fools' Day, and my CIA tradecraft skills were still intact. I had little choice but to bake for that starving artist. No lecture involved.

Whipping up a batch of his favorite oatmeal raisin cookies, with a side of "brownies" for added Fools' Day effect, I assessed that even the most stubborn teen could hardly resist my recruitment. 

When I picked him up from school with the warm batch in hand, he cracked.

“Let’s Go,” he said, grinning. 

"Gotta feed my starving artist," I replied with a wink, adding, "There may or may not be Ex-Lax baked in." 😉

He looked at me like I’d issued a challenge, then shoveled in a handful, calling my bluff.

“Time will tell,” I laughed.

It was an easy dopamine hit, a ceasefire by cookie. Denial and deception beat rejection this time.  

As for that manuscript, querying agents is the least of my worries with one teen left at home trying to outsmart me. Battling rejection left and right, motherhood keeps teaching the same lesson I wrote an entire book to learn: control is an illusion, there is joy baked into parenting (and garlic naan), and I’m still no quitter. And operationally, I need a new cache for that beer-fridge key.