Moms don’t cry

[audience applauding]
– Takeyla Benton: It’s a rare thing to get a glimpse of yourself from the outside.
All of your hard work, love, devotion, the sacrifices and sleepless nights and think, “I’m a pretty freaking awesome mom.”
[audience laughs] Well, [whoosh] this is not one of those times.
[laughter] It’s more like [whoosh] one of those occasions surrounded by half-folded [whoosh, child’s karate call] baskets of clothes and piles of books and papers screaming, “Will you kids just leave each other alone?
“WHY?
Why, why, why am I always stepping on Legos?”
[audience laughs, Takeyla sighs] “That’s it!
Go to bed.
Everybody, just go to bed!”
[laughter] I forced a smile, recalling that day.
“It was an overwhelming day,” I said to my son.
“I was very sad.”
“But you didn’t cry,” my little guy responded.
“Moms get mad a lot, but they don’t cry.”
In that instance, I realized how my kids must’ve saw me.
Have I failed to show my kids it’s okay to display emotions in a constructive way?
Hmm…
Surely, I’ve cried in front of my kids, right?
[purses lips] Well, when I was pregnant, I remember crying all the time.
[laughing] Those ASPCA commercials get me every time.
[audience laughing] But that was late at night, and I’m sure my daughter was sleeping.
Maybe one of the times when the pain from my migraine reached a fever pitch.
Probably not, since I prefer to hide in the bathroom.
I tend to hide in the bathroom a lot I think, when that uncomfortable emotional side of me starts taking over.
Could that be why my kids refuse to allow me any privacy in the bathroom?
[click, door creeks opens] Even if I’m on the toilet, they feel it’s okay to burst in, mid-argument, forcing me to mediate from the porcelain throne.
[kids yelling, audience laughs] Locking the door doesn’t help either.
I see little, tiny fingers underneath the door.
[laughter] They slide notes under there.
[laughter] Hear my son screaming, “Mom, Mom, “I know you’re not using the bathroom.
“You have your phone.
“I can see it.
[laughter] “Poo particles!
Poo particles are getting all over your phone.”
[Takeyla and audience laughing] They don’t know that I’m Googling affirmations because everything that I know how to do is not working anymore.
I’m replaying the last 14 years of my life, trying to figure out what went wrong.
And perhaps if I had cried more in front of their dad, he wouldn’t have been so distant.
He has told me on many occasions that he felt I was only open when I was crying, and my guard was down.
Yet the thought that my kids have not seen me cry bothers me deeply.
It bothers me as deeply as the constant tears that are ingrained on my shoulders that my mother cried on.
I knew early on I didn’t wanna be emotional like that.
I said, “I’d be a boulder like my grandmother, “who I only ever saw shed a tear for my father’s incarceration.”
Even when I saw her the last days of her life laying in her hospital bed, she looked at me and smiled, and motioned for me to come and sit next to her in the bed.
I couldn’t.
I ran in the bathroom and cried, and I still regret that to this day.
“Moms do cry,” I told my son, “Like when you leave your Legos on the floor, and I step on them.”
“Or, especially, when your sister uses up all the data, yeah, I cry.”
[audience laughing] [speaking as son] “No, no, you curse, Mom.
You don’t cry.”
Okay, note to self, stop cursing, at least out loud.
[Takeyla and audience laughing] Or perhaps the next time I’m in the bathroom, and one of them slides a note under the door, I’ll write a reply back that says, “Mom is crying.
Do not disturb,” and slide it back out to them, poo particles and all.
[audience laughing] Thank you.
[applause]