by Margo Macabee

Created on: December 09, 2009   Last Updated: December 10, 2009

I never really had the motherly instinct I have heard other women say completed them and I decided long ago that bearing children was not for me. People told me for decades, ‘someday you’ll change your mind!’ I would answer ‘no, I won’t. I’m forty now’. They’d persist and I would be forced to tell them I cannot have children. Then they seem so sad for me like I am going to miss being a real woman by not having a family of my own.

But I have people to take my motherly instincts out on if they ever do rear their ugly head. Even though my kids are either a few years older than me and absolutely no relation or have four legs, wet noses, no thumbs and shed twice a year, the old saying goes; friends are the family you chose. I made my choice and my family wears on me almost as much as any other stay-at-home-mom.  

‘Pater’ is a great provider and the adoring father of my lovely and intelligent daughter, ‘Blackie’. She’s an old pure breed Black Labrador; just beautiful and a coat like pure satin, even the tuft on her chest forms a perfect heart.  ‘Man/Child’ is my older unrelated son who still needs me to cook and do his laundry despite that fact he is all grown up with a daughter of his own, ‘Yellow’; a smaller love bug of a Lab-thing that calls me ‘Aunt Mommy’. What? We’re in the south.

As with most mothers, if I, ‘Mater’, as Blackie will refer to me as, am going to get any quiet time to myself to get a few things done, oh, like writing an article, I have to get up at four in the morning. I tip-toe quietly from Pater’s bed and forego an early flush that will wake bipeds and canines alike. My small coffee pot is on a timer for those precious few seconds more and I sneak up to my writing studio to take advantage of my best creative time in the early morning hours. But I can only get an hour and a half of writing time in, because at a quarter-to-six I know Blackie is sitting at the bottom of the well-blocked stairs wagging her tail and waiting.

“Mater. May I have my breakfast please?” But no matter what a sucker Pater is, I don’t feed Blackie till six-thirty and have to feel her glistening hungry puppy eyes boring a hole into my back. Well, she’ll have to wait. I’m busy making lunch for Pater.

Because Pater is one-quarter Foodie on his mother’s side, I can’t just toss a package of

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