Forget the Man Cave, Meet the Mom Cave!

This is the kind of insight you only gain while waiting to microwave your shrink-wrapped danish at a Howard Johnson as part of their complimentary breakfast. USA Today's Lead Paragraph of the Year perhaps?

When life gets stressful for Mary Kammerer, she retreats into a spare bedroom in her house. She lights candles or burns incense, listens to meditation music — sometimes she talks to her mom, whose ashes she keeps in the room.

She doesn't allow any interruptions. Her husband and pets know to stay away and she leaves her cellphone in the other room. She lies on the air mattress, closes her eyes and lets the music take her to a place where only she lives.

If my wife had a room where she talked to my dead mother-in-law, I'd steer clear, too. Coincidentally, Lily Tomlin plays the mother in the vase and you'll never believe the hilarity that ensues when she accidentally gets dumped on Steve Martin.

But wait, there's more:

"It puts me in a whole new world, where I can relax," said Kammerer, 51, of Rockledge, Fla., who works for Bridges, a community organization for people with special needs. She goes into the room two or three times a week for an hour, more if she is stressed. "It's better than a bubble bath."

 The tricky part is febrezing the stink of reefer out of the room.

For years, men have retreated to their "man caves" to watch sports, play video games or shoot pool without their wives or girlfriends around to bother them. Women who needed time alone had the kitchen, a place associated more with work than relaxation. It's now the social center in the home, so there's no privacy there. But these days, women are chiseling out their own sanctuary, taking over a room, nook or even a closet and making it their "mom cave."

HomeGoods has even made it part of their marketing campaign, laying out the essentials of every mom cave (mom jeans optional). Someone tell Mrs. Kammerer she's doing it wrong. The whole house is supposed to be a mom cave. After all, isn't the origin of the "man cave" a place to escape the delicate touch of a female that has overtaken the rest of the house?