She was more of a mother then any other fourteen women had any right to be. At night, while her children and

husband slept, she crept around outside sucking the motherness out of all the other mothers. This, said her seventeen year-old daughter, was exactly the problem with the world. All the selfish, rude, out of control kids playing violent video games, listening to Eminem and talking back to their parents, the families who never ate or did anything together except watch the TV, the insane divorce rate, the rise of reality television and spam email, wardrobe-malfunctions, and the mass decline of morals and degeneration of society in general was all due to the fact that there was not enough motherness to go around because she, the motheringest mother who ever did mother, had sucked it all up.

"So you see," Catherine informed Mrs. Mary Sharon, her mother," it's really all your fault. This is what comes of having too many children."

"You still may not take a nap," Mrs. Sharon said. "You'll mess up your sleep tonight. Do something useful, have you finished your English reports yet?"

"Mom," Catherine whined," it's only February and I don't need to be done with them until May, right?" She stuck her lip out and pouted.

"Catherine, that is not going to work, you don't have a pout. This is the New Meaner Mother, no more slack, do them now."

Catherine sighed. She turned from the kitchen table where Mrs. Sharon sat and walked over to the computer. "You know," she commented to her mother as she switched the machine on and sat down as it booted. "I don't think you learned anything from that story."

"That if I were less 'motherly' my children would be rude, selfish, talk back to me, play violent video games, and take up listening to obnoxious music and watching stupid television?"

"Yes!" Catherine exclaimed, waving a hand above her head victoriously. "I mean. . . No! I mean," she frowned at her mother. "You are much too much of a mother for your own good."

Mrs. Sharon said nothing, continuing to grade math pages very calmly. Catherine shook her head, pulled out Murder on the Orient Express from its place by the computer, opened it to the final scene, and resigned herself to work.

In a time and place where families with three children were considered large and those with four excessive, the Sharon

family was something of an oddity. Biologically, there were eight children in all, though if a friend spent too much time around the Sharon children, they were simply absorbed into the family. The boys were outnumbered two to six, meaning that there were two girls and six boys, and continually complained about this fact. Particularly, they said, for the reason that Dad, the Big Bull Moose, sat squarely on the girl's side.

William was the oldest at twenty-one, currently taking a year off from school to volunteer with the Peace Corp. After

him was Matthew at nineteen, working hard or hardly working full-time under a contractor during the day and attending the local community college at night. Then there was Catherine, the oldest girl at seventeen, attending the same college as Matthew full-time and working as a baby-sitter in her spare time. Steven, fifteen, attended public highschool and worked out full-time, improving his wrestler's physique. Jack and Daniel, thirteen and ten respectively, were heavily into sports and fought like the little darlings they were. Samuel, better known as "Fluffy", was the youngest boy at six and by consensus the most adorable little boy in seven countries. Marie, the youngest child and girl at the age of just three, ruled the house, and the Universe in general, full-time, taking her older sister's clothes and shoes when she had a spare moment.

"What is Marie doing under the table?" Matthew asked one night at dinner as he felt little feet stepping on his own size

seventeen feet.

"She's crawling around," Mrs. Sharon said patiently. "You all did the same thing, it drives me nuts," she thought for a moment, and then looked at the youngest Sharon boy, determinedly eating on her left. "Except Samuel, he never climbed around down there."

"Fluffy's much too polite," said Steven, and the little blond boy raised his eyebrows and grinned in delight around at his siblings.

"It's cause he's your child," Catherine added.

"Yes," sighed Mrs. Sharon," I suppose I should be thankful that one of the children has manners."

"So the score," Steven said," is Mom one, and Dad seven."

They all laughed, Daniel spraying milk out his nose.

"Daniel!" Mrs. Sharon exclaimed. In the kitchen, the phone began to ring. Catherine got up, still laughing, and went to get it.

"Hello," she said, answering the phone next to the computer," Sharon Family Bunny Farm, how may I help you?"

The reaction of friends when they entered the house was first fright, like a deer in the headlights. The Sharon children, even Fluffy when sufficiently excited, were the tiniest little bit wild and loved above most things to be silly.

Daniel had once asked, noting the four year gap between himself and Samuel, why there wasn't another child there.

"Well," said Matthew, turning around in his seat to face Daniel as they rode home from church," there was another child."

"His name was Bob," said Catherine. "Poor Bob. He was really annoying, asking all these dumb questions, so we went to the zoo and fed him to the lemurs."

Daniel's eyes grew large as his pupils dilated in terror. "Really?" He whispered.

"No," said Mrs. Sharon sharply, turning from the co-pilot's seat in the front of the twelve-passenger van where she sat beside Mr. Sharon," Catherine! Matthew! Steven! William!" She admonished, trying to hush their laughter.

"And," Catherine said sadly to a friend over for dinner as they elbowed their way to their seats," Fluffy and Marie don't believe any of the lies we tell them anymore."

"The most stressful part of parenting," a mother had once said to Alicia when picking her up for babysitting," is getting the children dressed and fed and out the door. Your mother has more experience with that then me; she must have trouble with you guys. What does she do to keep you in line? There are so many of you."

"We don't mess with our mother," Alicia said, raising her eyebrows and looking out the mini-van window.

"Sometimes you guys must be a handful, there are so many of you," the mother persisted, hushing her own children in the back.

"We don't mess with our mother," Alicia said again. "Nobody messes with my mother."

Most other mothers, it was concluded among the Sharon children, were somewhat in awe of Mrs. Sharon. Not only was she the mother of eight children, she had been homeschooling for more then ten years. This was an experience, the children saw with great satisfaction, that Mrs. Sharon was willing to share with anyone, loaning everything from Saxon math books to Magic School Bus tapes. (Catherine had decided to remain at home through High School, while the eldest three boys had attended public high school.) She also kept the tiny townhouse, in which the Sharons lived, in a state of near cleanliness, remarkable when considering the nine people who lived in it. On top of all that, Catherine noted proudly to her History professor one day, she had breast-fed all of them, none of that formula stuff. She was obviously filled to the top with motherness, and where do you think she got all of it?

It could be, perhaps, a subject of great debate on what exactly made Mrs. Mary Sharon the mother to end all other mothers, quite literally. Perhaps she had been exposed to radiation as a child and developed extremely large Motherness glands. Her heart may have been unusually large for a woman of her slender stature. Out of college she had worked in a nuthouse, learning to make such confections as Tiger Butter and pralines, and perhaps she simply enjoyed the experience so much that she wanted to perpetuate it. There could be little doubt that there was most definitely something wrong with the woman.

Many people seemed to think so and indeed had quite a problem with Mrs. Sharon who, instead of pursuing a rewarding business carrier and making something of herself, had instead devoted herself entirely to her family.

"Don't you know that children are starving in Africa?" One well-groomed lady had asked in line at the grocery store when William had been ten. "We are killing our world and you are not helping."

Mrs. Sharon, wearing a shirt that read "Yes, all these children are mine", a gift from her mother, just stared at the woman.

At another time, when there were only five little Sharons racing around their mother and another one obviously on the way, a man approached her. "Five children is too many," he said shortly, and then spun on his heel and walked away. She stood blinking for a moment, Mrs. Sharon recounted for her older children years later, wondering which one of her six children he thought she should do away with.

One rainy Friday afternoon in October found Catherine accompanying Kari, a good friend, on a trip to the mall to spend Kari's birthday money. She led the way to Hot Topic, the quasi Goth store for those seeking a more edgy look.

Kari ran a practiced hand along a pair of wide black pants studded with safety pins and chains while Catherine crouched in front of a rack of arm warmers. "I was looking at these with my mom," Kari told Catherine, looking at the price longingly," but she'd kill me if I spent all my money on them."

"Your mother comes in here?" Catherine asked, now looking in bemusement at the lacy thongs and ribbed corsets.

"Yeah," Kari said, moving over towards the shoes to examine a pair of red and black platform sneakers. "She prefers Lord and Taylor, though. She's into the home decorating thing."

"I can't believe people wear this stuff," Catherine commented, taking one thong off the rack. "It's just lace, what's the point of wearing anything at all?"

"Don't know," said Kari, turning to show her the shoes," like these?"

"They're cool," Catherine said.

There was the sense of pride in every breast of every Sharon child that came from having the world's best mother. A mother who did not try to be their best friend, as many mothers did, but was simply a mother, and mean when she had to be. There hinted in Catherine's voice a little of that pride now. "My mother wouldn't come in here," she said, looking around at the Marilyn Manson T-Shirts, assortment of semi-obscene gifts, and lip rings.

Catherine meditated on this as she took the bus home, listening as a pair of highschoolers, ("Public Schoolers," Catherine thought), rapped along to Emenim. It did not seem possible that such uncouth, obscene things could exist around her mother. In fact, Catherine was certain, if her mother were on the bus, the pair would be sitting up straight, very politely saying "good-afternoon," and perhaps studying their homework. Someone with so much motherness had such an effect.

"If my mother were in a room with someone like Marilyn Manson or Eminem," she concluded," they'd have to be nice or they'd just pop," and she was happy to be going to such a home into which everything that was wrong with the world could not go.

"Uh Cath," Samuel climbed up next to her at the computer later that night. "Can I play Snood?" He bounced up and down, looking a little anxious as he tapped the ends of his fingers together.

"Fluffy," Catherine turned to him and raised an eyebrow. "Is our mother the best one in the whole world?"

"Yes," he said emphatically, nodding.

"What makes her the best?"

"She's the best at it."

Catherine laughed. "No, what does she do that makes her the best?"

Fluffy thought for a moment. "She puts us in the time-out chair," he said," and she doesn't let us watch too much stupid television."

"What about Dad?" Catherine asked, after pausing for a moment to appreciate his insight. "Why is he the best dad in the world?" She did not need to ask if he was the best, it was an accepted truth.

"He doesn't talk back to Mom," Fluffy said, without hesitation.