Super Mom - The Expats

This post was inspired by mystery thriller novel The Expats by Chris Pavone. Kate Moore happily sheds her old life to become a stay at home mom when her husband takes a job in Europe. As she attempts to reinvent herself, she ends up chasing her evasive husband's secrets. Join From Left to Write on January 22 as we discuss The Expats. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

I had a difficult time trying to think of what to write for my book club, From Left to Write. We don't review the actual book itself but write about something inspired by the book.

I finished the book a while ago and wondered what to write about as I didn't really enjoy the book. Don't get me wrong, the book was good, but when you read in bits and pieces like I do, it gets difficult to follow a book with so many twists and turns.

I racked my brain trying to think of something to write about and as I pondered various ideas I got to thinking about how the main character in the book, Kate Moore, is a mom. A mom with a secret identity that she keeps from her kids as well as her husband. She plans and plots and connives and her kids are none the wiser, she's always there to pick them up after school and play games with them and feed them.

It made me stop to realize just how many identities moms have, identities that their kids and many times their spouses know nothing about.

My mom for example. I used to go off to school and I never wondered what my mom did all day. I knew she did housework because our house was always clean and there was always food on the table, but what else did she do? To this day I still don't really know.

Just like my kids probably will never know exactly what I did. I wonder if my kids knew that while they were at school their mom was working as a bill collector. Calling debtors, fighting with them to get them to pay their financial obligations. I was threatened and had things thrown at me. Once a man threw a stapler that was on the counter at me (we learned not to leave anything on the counter that could be used as a weapon.) Luckily I was quick and ducked in time to avoid getting hit.

Their mom also spent many years meeting with families who had just lost a loved one in order to organize funeral arrangements. She also arranged flowers and photos in the viewing rooms and many times helped the embalmer to casket a body and helped the funeral director to load caskets into the hearse. She even drove the limo once for the family of prize fighter Jerry Quarry who once fought Muhammad Ali. 

There are also lots of other things that I did that I'm sure I never want my kids to find out about and some things that I really wish they knew about me. But what is amazing is that there are so many moms out there doing interesting and amazing things but to their kids, they are simply mom.

One thing that I always loved about working in funeral service was hearing kids give their memories and thoughts about their mother when putting together an obituary. Many times I would hear one of them say, "Really? I never knew that about mom."

Do you know what your mom did while you were in school? Was she a surgeon, an astronaut, a baker, a business woman? Did she write a book or invent a product we all know about?

Mom's are the unsung hero's of the world, except on Mother's Day of course!