This text first appeared here on brigitte.de.
“Your grandpa used to smoke in the front of the car while I sat and sang in the back without a child seat or seat belt,” my father likes to say. “Back then, red traffic lights were more likely to be run over,” he adds with a laugh. In fact, fortunately, he’s still alive – and that’s why he got me. Not that I think it’s right when six-year-olds smoke in the cart without a fuse, but what my mother friends and I sometimes do isn’t entirely clean either.
At the last New Year’s Eve party, Sonja and Tessa spent half an hour at a safe distance of about 100 meters in front of the garages. “Luis and Anton are still awake, we don’t want them to see their mothers smoking on the balcony,” they whispered to me after five minutes of cleaning the bathroom. Including disinfection. “No, Carlotta, that’s apple spritzer for adults,” meanwhile my friend Sabine shrieked as her five-year-old reached for her champagne. And when I shouted “shit” because my gin and tonic had fallen down, I mostly got angry looks from adults. The children didn’t notice anything because they threw streamers at each other. And I wasn’t even drunk, I’m just a jerk.
Of course you have to protect your children, I’m also more of the protective type of mother. Of course, you shouldn’t send them to the gas station drunk and slurring “fuck” to get fags and grain. But they can still know that Mama isn’t drinking apple spritzer right now, I think. There are things that only adults are allowed to do and children are not. They are not always right or healthy, sometimes even dangerous. That’s why you don’t have to copy them. You can then explain that straight away. Even the best make mistakes.
I then thought about whether I had to be more papal than the Pope – or rather more motherly than Mother Theresa – and decided the following: Sometimes (or more often) I just slip out a “shit”. Since my children are of course super smart, they then say “Mom, you don’t say that”, I apologize – and that’s it. I don’t smoke in front of my kids because I only do it when I’m drunk. And I don’t want them to see me drunk. Nobody should do that though, because then I’m a very embarrassing person. My children are still quite young, I have to keep a reasonably clear head. But those are just my rules. No one will die from it or have permanent injuries because they find out that their parents have also pulled on a cigarette or drunk too much gin and tonic. I am convinced of that. Point.
Normally one celebrates without the children. That’s why Sonja, Tessa, Sabine and I have just planned a weekend in Berlin. There we can drink, smoke, say “shit”, “fuck” and “kiss your ass” as much and as often as we want. Then when we return on Sunday, we will be exemplary again. Or not. My father eventually became something, even though my grandfather smoked him all over the place and ran red lights. At least that’s what he likes to say.
