Flowers Fall

Thirsty: Wading Through the Intoxicating Waters of Being Bad

by Bethany Saltman, July 30, 2009

The writer Stefanie Wilder-Taylor has made a career of being a ribald and boozy mom. Her popular books have names like Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay and Naptime Is the New Happy Hour (2006 and 2008; both Simon Spotlight Entertainment). A couple of weeks ago, she confessed on her blog that her happy hours aren’t so cheerful. Ooops.

“For some people I’m sure this is a nice thing, a tribunal thing (a drink at the end of the day with their spouse or friends),” she writes. “For others it might be a once-in-a-while treat to go out and have a couple of cocktails. For me, it’s become a nightly compulsion and I’m outing myself to you; all of you: I have a problem.”

Whatever we might think of the public nature of her revelation (I should talk!), mom-blogs in general, or the goofy titles of Ms. Wilder-Taylor’s books, I for one think she is pointing to something interesting. While I certainly don’t drink nightly, very compulsively, or much at all while Azalea is up and about—despite my bravado, I am actually a pretty tame social drinker—I have noticed an increase in my attraction to alcohol over the past few years. Since Azalea was born, I crave the softening of a certain edge more than ever before. At the end of a week or even sometimes a day, all the awareness I have so diligently been honing burns a hole in my pocket and I lust to spend it all in one place. Then, when Azalea goes to bed, I want a drink, and, yes, even a smoke. Gross, I know. But I come by it so honestly!

As I wrote last month’s column on “slow parenting,” I reflected on my family’s style, and I came to see even more clearly why it is that being a parent arouses a desire in me to be bad: I have oddly fond memories of being a child among “partying” adults. I remember aunts and uncles sitting in lawn chairs wearing Bermuda shorts, drinking gin and tonics on Memorial Day, Independence Day, Satur-Day,…as we ran around in our crazy plaids, racing each other with eggs on spoons, getting lost on our tricycles (okay, that was just me), and eventually smoking butts in the woods that lined the edges of public parks. Luckily my parents were not the big drinkers. In fact my dad had an actual allergy and vomited profusely from the stuff; I never saw him drink a drop, and my mom enjoys a little buzz but is a total lightweight who doesn’t like being out of control. However, surrounding my mom was her family, brimming with booze, and everyone smoked like chimneys all day, every day. Have you seen “Mad Men”? It was like that.