Suburban Mom Quotes

Your typical suburban mom worries all the time, but she worries about the wrong things

You should be more paranoid than you are. Your typical suburban mom worries all the time, but she worries about the wrong things. Because she doesn’t worry about me.

At Last It's a perfect winter day. No wind. No Arctic freeze. Cloudless azure sky. A day to fly. Snow drapes the mountain like ermine, fabulous feather- light powder coaxing me to flee the confines of my room, brave the mostly plowed road up to the closest ski resort. To run from the cloying silence connected Mom and Dad, into encompassing stillness far away from city dirt and noise Far above suburban gridlock. Far beyond the grasp of home.

Besides shopping at garage sales, I love hosting garage sales. Every year my mom and I dig through our houses and find a bunch of crap (I mean really terrific stuff) to sell so we can earn some money so we can go back out and buy some more crap (I mean really terrific stuff) that we’ll use for a bit and then turn around and garage-sale in a couple of years. It’s the circle of life suburban style.

I couldn't bear being this suburban mom who was alternating between screaming at her kids and being the heartfelt, privileged witness to their joy. But the people around us - the haranguing mothers and sexless fathers - I kept trying to find ways that I was better than these people, but all I kept landing on was the fact that the common denominator was me.

It was like a nightclub rave… at 10 am… for moms and toddlers… in a library.

A meal is sacramental when the rich and poor, powerful and marginalized, sinners and saints share equal status around the table. A local church is sacramental when it is a place where the last are first and the first are last and where those who hunger and thirst are fed. And the church universal is sacramental when it knows no geographic boundaries, no political parties, no single language or culture, and when it advances not through power and might, but through acts of love, joy, and peace and missions of mercy, kindness, humility. In this sense, church gives us the chance to riff on Jesus’ description of the kingdom, to add a few new metaphors of our own. We might say the kingdom is like St. Lydia’s in Brooklyn where strangers come together and remember Jesus when they eat. The kingdom is like the Refuge in Denver, where addicts and academics, single moms and suburban housewives come together to tell each other the truth. The kingdom is like Thistle Farms where women heal from abuse by helping to heal others. The kingdom is like the church that would rather die than cast two of its own out the doors because they are gay. The kingdom is like St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland, Tennessee, where you are loved just for showing up. And even still, the kingdom remains a mystery just beyond our grasp. It is here, and not yet, present and still to come. Consummation, whatever that means, awaits us. Until then, all we have are metaphors. All we have are almosts and not quites and wayside shrines. All we have are imperfect people in an imperfect world doing their best to produce outward signs of inward grace and stumbling all along the way. All we have is this church—this lousy, screwed-up, glorious church—which, by God’s grace, is enough.

held on to Edward’s hand, gave him some of the best eye contact I’d given anyone in a while, and Dr. Fields tried to stitch me up ahead of my body’s healing. Even with the ardeur days from being fed I was healing too fast for normal medical help. Fuck. Edward talked low to me. He whispered about the case, tried to get me to think about work. It worked for a while, and then the painkiller was all gone and I was still being stitched up. I couldn’t think about work. He talked about his family, about what Donna was doing with her metaphysical shop, about Peter in school and in martial arts. He was working on his second black belt. Becca and her musical theater, and the fact that he was still taking her to dance class twice a week, that amused me enough for me to say, “I want to see you sitting with all the suburban moms in the waiting area.

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — The harrowing drama “I Smile Back,” making its debut on Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival, opens with a drawn-out shot of a naked, forlorn woman. She is an alcoholic suburban mom having a cocaine-fueled affair and wrestling with mental illness. At one point she gets beaten bloody in an alley.

I'm sorry. I am just your typical suburban mom that watches Sons of Anarchy, and I think I am all bad ass. I will shut up.

Supposedly, he didn’t used to be a douchebag, of which you are the proof. At one time, long, long ago, he was someone your mother could love. We don’t quite believe this, even though he will occasionally roll his eyes at one of your colorful outfits or pseudo-revolutionary statements and say something cryptic like If you only knew me when I first met your mom, like you’re too late, you missed your chance to have a parent who actually understands you, and now you’re stuck with this prematurely balding man who works seventy hours a week at a bank and drives a gas-guzzling four-wheel-drive Suburban, even though he never hauls anything around except his new brat kid and way-too-young and obnoxiously boring trophy wife and the occasional large electronics purchase.

What would your last meal be?" I asked suddenly. That was a night when I thought it would be all right if my life ended. "A really long omikase. Like at least thirty-four courses. I want Yesuda to cook them himself. He puts the soy sauce on with a paintbrush." "Salmon pastrami from Russ and Daughters. A ton of bagels. Like three bagels." "In-N-Out double double." "I'm thinking about a Barolo, something really ripe and dirty, like from the eighties." "ShackBurger and a milk shake." "My mom's was veal scallopini and a Diet Coke." "Nonna's Bolognese----it takes eight hours. She makes the pappardelle by hand." "A roast chicken---I would eat the entire thing by hand. And I guess a DRC. When else would I taste that kind of Burgundy?" "Blinis, caviar, and crème fraîche. Done and done. Some impossible Champagne, Krug, or a culty one like the Selosse, drunk out of the bottle." "Toast," I said, when my turn came. I tried to think of something more glamorous, but toast was the truth. I expected to be mocked. My suburban-ness, my stupidity, my blankness. "What on top?" "Um. Peanut butter. The raw kind you get from the health-food stores. I salt it myself.

How was she being sent both “middle-aged suburban mom” and “teenage babysitter” roles?

didn’t explain much to Karen either. She wouldn’t get it, with her stable accounting career and her new life as a suburban mom. I’d just bury the whole business and try to move on with my life.

Xanthi came into my childhood in August of 1954, arriving at Union Station near the Chicago River, final stop in a transatlantic journey to help take care of me and my siblings in suburban Oak Park while Mom underwent treatment, such as it was in those days, for breast cancer metastases. Xanthi was a friend of my maternal grandmother’s, maybe even a distant relative. Didn’t matter to me as a four-year-old boy. Whoever she was related to, she left her home on the Peloponnesus to live with us for room and board and some money to send back home after a string of cataclysms bludgeoning Greece at the time.

He hasn’t been here a full twenty-four hours, and I feel like he’s flipped my life on its head. Why do I act so strange around him? I love my husband and would never cheat on him. And it’s not like a good-looking guy in his twenties would want anything to do with a thirty-three-year-old suburban mom. Jeez, Briar. Get a hold of yourself.

I just wish one of the things I was good at was normal mom stuff,” she said with a sigh. She leaned back against her kitchen cabinet and closed her eyes. I nodded. “I know. All of the work always seems to fall on us, even if it’s unintentional. Finding babysitters, remembering that we need extra milk, sending in the field trip form. It’s all small stuff but it takes up extra brain space.

Moms were the ones who had to fix problems. From small things like a skinned knee to bigger ones like supernatural forces trying to take over our families.

gloves all the time. That’s rule four – always fully dressed, always long sleeves and pants, and always have your gloves on. I’ve asked why and Mom has declined to explain, answering with a simple, terse, “Because I said so.” I guess it was in case I ever had to run. My eyes scanned the landscape of the suburban street in front of me.

Lorraine fiddled with the unlit cigarette. The moms went back to their inane chatter, though with less enthusiasm. They constantly sneaked glances at Lorraine, as if she were some virus introduced into their suburban life-form with a mission to destroy it.

knew he’d spoken the truth. It would be okay because Mr. Perfect would make it okay. The guy was responsible, dependable, a stand-up fellow. Hadn’t she rubbed it in, all the differences between Greg and Brody? Her boyfriend wouldn’t let her down. Guys like Greg Bannister had invented the phrase “do the right thing” just for this particular situation. In no time at all Brody’s office mom would be installed in whatever passed for suburban splendor in Alaska—a cozy split-level igloo perhaps, with a two-dogsled garage and a plastic flamingo out front. On the other side of the world, practically. Reflexively Brody pulled her closer. “I take it you haven’t done a pregnancy test yet.” She shook her head. “I want to wait until... well, I just want to wait.” “No more waiting. We’ll pick up one of those drugstore kits.” He pulled her up off the bench. “No.” “What do you mean, no? You’ve gotta find out.” “I will,” she said, “when I’m ready.” “Well, I’m ready now. Is there a pharmacy in this place?” He shooed away her hands when she tried to lift a bag, and grabbed the handles of all seven himself. They were awkward to carry and much too heavy for a mother-to-be, filled with a wrought-iron magazine rack, black marble bookends, and other household furnishings that reflected the taste of the

I find it amazing that suburban women work at all, but work they must. For a new factor has been added to the old suburban formula; the need for ever-increasing amounts of cash.

Unless a suburban woman is in the relatively rare position of commanding a high salary, and is able to find and afford top-quality child care, she may find herself in a no-win situation

I have a complicated spiritual history. Here's the short version: I was born into a Mass-going Roman Catholic family, but my parents left the church when I was in the fifth grade and joined a Southern Baptist church—yes, in Connecticut. I am an alumnus of Wheaton College—Billy Graham's alma mater in Illinois, not the Seven Sisters school in Massachusetts—and the summer between my junior and senior year of (Christian) high school, I spent a couple of months on a missions trip performing in whiteface as a mime-for-the-Lord on the streets of London's West End. Once I left home for Wheaton, I ended up worshiping variously (and when I could haul my lazy tuckus out of bed) at the nondenominational Bible church next to the college, a Christian hippie commune in inner-city Chicago left over from the Jesus Freak movement of the 1960s, and an artsy-fartsy suburban Episcopal parish that ended up splitting over same-sex issues. My husband of more than a decade likes to describe himself as a “collapsed Catholic,” and for more than twenty-five years, I have been a born-again Christian. Groan, I know. But there's really no better term in the current popular lexicon to describe my seminal spiritual experience. It happened in the summer of 1980 when I was about to turn ten years old. My parents had both had born-again experiences themselves about six months earlier, shortly before our family left the Catholic church—much to the shock and dismay of the rest of our extended Irish and/or Italian Catholic family—and started worshiping in a rented public grade school gymnasium with the Southern Baptists. My mother had told me all about what she'd experienced with God and how I needed to give my heart to Jesus so I could spend eternity with him in heaven and not frying in hell. I was an intellectually stubborn and precocious child, so I didn't just kneel down with her and pray the first time she told me about what was going on with her and Daddy and Jesus. If something similar was going to happen to me, it was going to happen in my own sweet time. A few months into our family's new spiritual adventure, after hearing many lectures from Mom and sitting through any number of sermons at the Baptist church—each ending with an altar call and an invitation to make Jesus the Lord of my life—I got up from bed late one Sunday night and went downstairs to the den where my mother was watching television. I couldn't sleep, which was unusual for me as a child. I was a champion snoozer. In hindsight I realize something must have been troubling my spirit. Mom went into the kitchen for a cup of tea and left me alone with the television, which she had tuned to a church service. I don't remember exactly what the preacher said in his impassioned, sweaty sermon, but I do recall three things crystal clearly: The preacher was Jimmy Swaggart; he gave an altar call, inviting the folks in the congregation in front of him and at home in TV land to pray a simple prayer asking Jesus to come into their hearts; and that I prayed that prayer then and there, alone in the den in front of the idiot box. Seriously. That is precisely how I got “saved.” Alone. Watching Jimmy Swaggart on late-night TV. I also spent a painful vacation with my family one summer at Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Heritage USA Christian theme park in South Carolina. But that's a whole other book…

When Mom and Dad die, they’re taken care of by strangers in a nursing home two towns over. The kids don’t have to see them go. They don’t even have to see them after. They just get a “we’re sorry to inform you” call late that night from the institution’s management, for whom such calls are as routine as putting out the weekly garbage is for a suburban homeowner. The funeral home picks up the body. The cemetery buries it. Unless you’re a professional, you might live your whole life without seeing someone in the moment of leaving his own.

Well, good,” he told her. “Because I think you're a spoiled little brat with delusions of being some kind of suburban princess,” he bit out. “And I think you need to realize there's more to life than pink frilly outfits and the perfect shade of lip gloss. If you didn't look like you do, you'd have no friends at all.”               She was still on her knees, head down, determined not to cry. She didn't have friends. His words cut like a knife, but they were all true. It was bad enough her mom wasn't here to watch her movie with her. She didn't need Dylan to make her feel like nothing. After finally getting all of the ruined popcorn back into the bowl, she stood and turned around quickly, avoiding his gaze. She dumped the contents of the bowl in the garbage and marched straight past him and into the living room. Over her shoulder she mustered the ability to shout without a hint of a crack in her voice. “Yeah, well I think you're a pretentious prick who thinks he's too good for everyone since he went to that dumb-ass college!”               Katie flopped down onto the couch, bundled herself up in blankets, and flipped through her DVR to find Legally Blonde. It could at least make her feel better even if her mother wasn't around. A single, solitary tear rolled down her right cheek as she heard Dylan walk behind her, headed for the stairs. She tried as hard as she could to block out the cry-fest she knew was coming until he got to his room where he couldn't hear her, but just when she heard his foot hit the first creaky step, she let out a sniffle and wiped a tear from her face. Katie heard Dylan stop. There were no more creaks on the stairs. Shit, she thought to herself. He heard her.                              

Somehow I missed the news bulletin about the suburban moms who lure other suburban moms into their homes, dope them with tainted coffee, and then steal their internal organs to sell on the black market.

But when he texts at four P.M. all of that fantasy is disrupted. She wants to cry thinking of how nice it would be if he had just texted her yesterday, or even this morning. To experience the excitement and the butterflies without the goddamn panic. How nice it would be if he cared about her enough to let her shave her legs a full day in advance. He writes, What u into. He’s at the job site, telling the guys which earth to move, or he’s at a bar two miles from the site having a cold Miller, or he’s on the toilet at the bar typing on his phone. Fuck. What u into, Lina knows, means I will fuck you right now if you can get near to where I am within the allotted time. What u into. I’m free for the rest of the night. River. River, she copied. See you there. The kids are home. All the women she knows—there aren’t many—who might be able to watch the kids are busy. She knows they’re busy because she calls, texts, and Facebook messages every one of them. Her parents watched the kids just yesterday and they’ll call her a bad mom. She would take the heat but they’re not home. Eventually one woman calls Lina back. In the voice mail she’d left, Lina promised $15 an hour. That’s a high figure for the area. The woman says she can watch the children. She feels exhilarated. She found a woman, she ordered a pizza, she went to her husband’s job site and dropped the Bonneville off and picked up his car and left the Bonneville keys and is driving to the river in the Suburban. She is crazed, panicked, afraid that she won’t get there on time. A little after five P.M. he texts, Waiting. What the fuck, she thinks. What the fuck do I do. She’s afraid to say how far away she is because he will write, Better not. Better not makes her want to vomit.

The drive is supposed to take six and a half hours but somehow we have been on the road for eight when we come to the wooden sign sunk into grass that signifies the entrance to Deakins Park, and although Honey is still caterwauling, passing the sign feels like entering protected land, something apart from the ravages of the town. It sounds like hair-splitting to parse the varieties of mobile home, like something only a person obsessed about imperceptible class minutia would do, but there are mobile homes and mobile homes and despite how mortified Mom and I used to be by the fact that her parents lived in a mobile home now I happen to think Deakins Park is just as nice if not nicer than many a suburban cul-de-sac of for example the Nut Tree-adjacent variety. It’s a circle of nicely appointed and discreetly mobile homes of different styles and patterns built on either side of a large circular street, each with a good-size yard. The outer ring of houses is bounded by a split-rail fence, and beyond this the town gives over to the high desert, with low, prickly sagebrush and rafts of tumbleweed through which jackrabbits and antelopes poke delicately in the cool mornings. Everyone has plenty of space and a view of the low-lying mountains ringing the basin. The houses look pretty good. It’s a little neighborhood on the frontier. Home on the range, if you will.