In the 1990s I wrote a humorous column for my local newspaper about raising seven children. A while back I was looking back through some of those columns and remembered that I, the woman who took only one college-level science class, had disproven the theory of evolution during the years of raising my children.
Almost 20 years later, my proof is even stronger. Here’s how it goes:
When my daughter Dawn, who has cerebral palsy, was doing a therapy that required me to listen to a bunch of lectures based firmly on anti-creationism, pro-evolution ideas, I was instructed that “function determines structure.” That is, if a living being needs something, it grows it. For example, when living creatures needed to evolve from some primordial slime, they grew legs to walk on land.
Don’t worry, though. I thoroughly disproved thattheory when my kids were all home, all needing help with homework, all hungry and all needing clean clothes, money, attention, tears wiped and a ride somewhere at the same time.
The evening that cinched my proof was one that I was trying to get the kitchen cleaned up, according to the previous column.
A typical evening
I’m sure the dryer was endlessly buzzing that the clothes needed me to a background symphony of “Mommy, Mommy.” I had one or two needing help with homework, probably math, which I couldn’t help them with after the sixth grade level, or with the endless essays, which I could help with.
I was printing out a book I had sold and needed to send to the publisher the next day. And a stack of the kids’ projects waited for my slow dot-matrix printer to spit out all those pages that then had to have the side margins ripped off and the pages separated.
I’m sure some son was waiting somewhere to be picked up from ball practice somewhere. No, make that two of them, at opposite ends of the city.
According to the past column, my youngest daughter was yelling for me to come see if she got all the shampoo out of her hair and where was her Barney towel when she needed it?
That evening, typical of all evenings raising children, I stood in the living room and honestly tried to grow a couple of extra arms. Or even ears. But it didn’t work. The only thing I have ever been able to successfully grow and divide, quite rapidly really, are fat cells. No problem there.
Then the phone rangand a dripping wet daughter went to answer it. She talked a little, then said, “Mommy, it’s for you!” Although I wasafraid it was someone else needing one of my arms or legs or ears to do something else, I went to answer it.
It was my sister. “What is going on over there?” she said over the background noise. “I asked her if you were busy and she said you weren’t doing anything.”
I tried to explain that I was standing in the middle of the floor trying to grow some more arms and hands, but I don’t think she believed me.
Stalled on the evolutionary ladder
I’ve been a mother almost 39 years, and I still have not grown any extra arms, hands or legs to move me up the evolutionary tree, except for the aforementioned fat cells. Of course, I thought of that whole fat cell thing as I flopped down in the recliner to write this column while watching a movie. No extra brain cells either apparently.
Sure, I don’t have kids at home anymore, but now I juggle two jobs. I need a pair of hands for each of those. And it would be nice if I could send a set of extra legs out to exercise while I sit in the recliner writing. I’d like to grow a whole extra body in fact that could do all the work while I sat back and read all the books on my want-to-read list.
Wait. I remember. I do as a mother and grandmother have magical eyes in the back of my head. Even my students at the community college where I teach believe that when I catch them texting under the tables.
If thousands of years down the road, mothers have even begun to grow an extra set of hands to rock the baby while wiping the four-year-old’s nose while solving an algebra homework question while folding laundry while fixing dinner while . . . you get the picture . . . then I’ll believe.
And as far as that new Higgs Boson “God particle” that explains how we all got here,I’ve got a question about that too. Tell me. Who made it?
Elzey is a freelance writer for the Register & Bee. She is the author of “Miracle of the Christmas Star,” which you can read about at www.miracleofthechristmasstar.com. To read her newspaper columns, go to www.godanriver.com. Scroll to the bottom to do a site search and search for “7XMOM Elzey.”
