Dream of Becoming a Stage Mom

A couple months back when this pic was snapped, I had this crazy thought that my daughter could be a successful kid model. This is always a dicey speculation. The stories of bratty child actors/models are legendary.

But Maxie is special. She really takes to the camera. She doesn't do what Sebastian does, which is smile like a Cheshire cat gone rabid. No, Maxie actually seems to understand the nuance of posing. And her pictures are oftentimes glorious.

It did occur to me if Maxie were to be a child model then I, of course, would have to become a stage mom. I tried to put myself into Mama Rose's wedgies and pill box hat, and I began to see possibility... Swigging Chardonnay with Mama Kardashian and Mama Lohan, demanding my daughter's mini fridge be filled with Kabbalah water and diet passion fruit infusions, insisting her dressing room include tuberose scented aromatherapy tea candles, the newest set of Hello Kitty plushy collectibles and green tea Lip Smackers (it is implied that wire hangers would not be tolerated.) I would perversely enjoy elbowing other little ones out of the way so my Sunshine could rise, rise, rise to the top of the heap. And no provincial nomenclature...my incandescent daughter would go by the mononame, Maxwell. "Move out of the way, ladies. Maxwell is here! And where are her chartreuse M & M's, dammit?" Yes, Stage Mom is a mantle I was ready and willing to wear.

Then not a week after this Stage Mommy Dearest fantasy, there was a moment in the house when it was just too quiet. Parents, you know what I'm talking about. When all the kiddie chatter and electronic bleeping and pinging that you get used to as part of the constant ambient household noise suddenly goes mute.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up. I had bleak thoughts that the kids made a break for it and ran off to join the circus or a Tyler Perry road tour.

I called out. No response. I went into the back yard and immediately both of my heathens look at me with eyes of guilt. It didn't take long for me to detect the kiddie scissors in Maxie's hand. Then I noticed something fall to the ground, featherlike, wafting to and fro. My eye traveled with this mote and when it touched the Saltillo tiles I noticed it landed on a pile of like members.

Realization hit me with the force of a Serena Williams backhand. Noooooooo! "Turn around," I demanded to my daughter, my stomach knotted like an overwrought suture. But it was too late. Even before Maxie did her one-eighty I knew what I was about to see. And I was right. There in the back of her head was a bald spot the size of a meaty ham hock.

Dream shattered. Mama Rose would have to wait.