Lisa Frank Taught Me How to Be a Better Mom

When I was around nine years old I would sit on my twin bed every night, in the room I shared with my little sister, and count my stickers. My collection filled one of those huge three-ring photo albums that every household had back in 1992, when photos still went in albums. The outside was navy with a gold trim, and the inside was filled with neatly organized stickers of every kind, each page protected by a thin film of plastic—shiny, sparkly, fuzzy, and the holy grail, oily. Oilies were a 3D plastic sticker filled with an iridescent liquid substance that’s reminiscent of a mood ring. I could trade five regular stickers for one oily. They were kind of a big deal. And because of all the trading that went on between my friends and I, the nightly counting ritual was also a big deal. I kept an envelope in the back of the album that held extra sticker paper, and on it was where I wrote the number. Every night, for some reason I still can’t figure out, I'd count, crossing out the old total and rewriting the new one. This was the kind of kid I was.

Fast forward 30 years and I'm now a mom to a three-year-old firecracker named Frankie. She is a strong-willed kid who doesn't easily listen, agree, or do what I want her to do at any given time. She's stubborn and sassy and smart as hell. In some ways she's just like me, but in most ways she's nothing like me—and she's especially nothing like the child I remember being. When Frankie was about a year and a half I bought her her first pack of stickers, and was horrified when she stuck the jungle animals one on top of the other on a torn piece of scrap paper. The pack included three sheets and after I saw what she did with the first, I hid the other two on a high shelf out of her reach. I just couldn’t bear the idea of these brand-new stickers being stuck haphazardly on random pieces of paper, colored over, ripped in half, never to be seen again. This is the kind of mom I am. 

At the end of 2020 my mother sold the house I grew up in, the house that housed the twin bed I sat on counting my stickers every night. She spent months purging and cleaning out every drawer, every closet, and of course, my bedroom. Evidence of my childhood filled our daily text messages as she sent me photos of my things, asking what to keep and what to toss. The days went by and I waited patiently for my sticker album to appear in our thread; when it finally did I was thrilled. She shipped it to me in a big box surrounded by other nostalgic items like my New Kids on the Block beach towel, two Cabbage Patch dolls, and my stack of journals. 

The day it arrived I sat on the couch with Frankie and opened it for the first time in over 20 years. She was delighted as I pointed out the Sandylion fuzzy Siamese cats, the Mrs. Grossman’s prismatic rocket ships, and the Hambly Studios sparkly sea creatures. I smiled at the kromkote gumball machines and the glow in the dark frogs. And then I laughed that I had also included every unremarkable sticker I ever got out of a vending machine, the dentist’s office, or from a teacher at school. Frankie kept wanting to take the stickers out from under the thin plastic film but I wouldn't let her. I told her these were special stickers, ones not for sticking on anything. She looked at me like I was crazy, and I guess I was. But as I flipped the pages of the album, taking a trip back into my prepubescent mind, I had a sort of aha moment. It occurred to me that back then, during the confusion of being a chubby, braces-wearing pre-teen, and the chaos of my parents’ divorce which spanned over the course of many years, this album was where I channeled all my anxiety. It was where I desperately grasped for order. And in that moment, sitting on my couch refusing to share the stickers with my three year old, I realized how perfect of a metaphor it is for one of the things I struggle with most about motherhood: my lack of control. 

The writer (@crispearlstein) and her daughter Frankie.

I treasured my sticker album so much that I never actually used the stickers inside. The album was a veritable museum, with no touching, only looking. And like museums, my organization system was complex and thorough: every single sticker was put into a category, and within the categories there were classifications that only I understood. For example, I kept all the fuzzy stickers together (of course), but in my mind it made more sense to put the fuzzy unicorns in the four-page unicorn section, not with the other fuzzies. The same went for dogs and teddy bears. But some aesthetics trumped others. I kept all the brightly-colored, acid-trippy Lisa Frank stickers together no matter what animals (like tutu-clad ballerina bunnies) or shapes (like psychedelic music notes) they were. I suppose organizing always came naturally to me because I had a similar system for my collection of trolls, too. I kept them all on a shelf sorted by hair color, but also by theme and by height. And years later as a young teen I stacked my YM magazines in neat chronological piles under my desk, saving them for who knows what. When I think back to those days and how I organized my stickers (and trolls, and magazines) it kind of reminds me of how I am with loading my dishwasher now. Some things never change.

What’s strange is that as a teenager and young adult I honestly thought of myself as a laid-back type, someone who went with the flow. I was popular, had lots of friends, and was the life of the party, none of which are ways you would describe a tightly-wound type-A control freak. But that’s the thing about motherhood, isn’t it? It has a way of flipping on a flashlight that illuminates the facets of ourselves we either didn’t know existed or have been trying to keep hidden in the dark—and it also illuminates the things about our kids that challenge who we are because maybe we’re a little jealous of who they are. My daughter is the type of kid to take her stickers and stick them anywhere she pleases; I was the type of kid who put them safely behind plastic film and counted them every night. 

During those fragile tween years my collection was my prized possession, something I proudly shared with anyone who was willing to flip the pages. Whenever I showed someone for the first time they were impressed, and that made me feel good. I liked having the biggest, most well-organized sticker album. Maybe I liked impressing people. Or maybe it was my way of proving to the world that I had my pre-adolescent shit together, at least on the outside. When the album resurfaced recently it brought back memories, yes, but more than that it brought back feelings. Feelings that were hard to explain, hard to trace. Kind of like how when you smell a certain smell and your whole body reacts, but you can’t put your finger on why. I was proud of this giant book of perfectly-categorized stickers, but also a little sad for the young girl who created it.

I’ve worked hard since then to loosen up, to not micromanage the way Frankie uses and plays with stickers, or really anything for that matter. But I can’t change who I am deep down. Deep down I still want to count every sticker in my album, and keep them safe under plastic. But I also know that if I don’t share it with my daughter then what’s the point? What was the point of having saved it at all? I want to give the young girl who made that album a second chance to be a kid. A kid who actually uses her stickers, plays with them, creates magic with them, and I realize now as a mom that that second chance is Frankie. I’ll probably start small and give her the stickers I don’t care as much about: the baby in funny sunglasses with the words “My future’s so bright I gotta wear shades!” or the two pages of Hallmark brand Valentine’s hearts. Maybe after that I’ll work my way up to the fuzzy pig family or the shiny clowns. But the oilies? I’ll save those for when she’s older.