Mother?

October 21st, 2023| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

When one of her kids call, Tammy Kumin comes running, no matter what the time is, day or night. Like any good mom

Except, she isn’t the actual mother of the kids she mothers 24-7. She’s simply their “rent-a-mom””!

I’m a mom away from mom—a total support system for students.”

Ms. Kumin, now in her seventies, and the biological parent of three and grandmother of six from Boston, is the founder of Concierge Service for Students (CSS).

She does it all—emergency grocery shopping, cooking, and laundry. She’s even jumped on a plane in the wee hours to bail one of her youngsters out of a Miami jail, and has rushed to bedsides in New York emergency rooms.

The “momtrepreneur” (as a New York Post article labeled her) launched the concierge service in 1993, wanting to offer a helping hand to both U.S. and international students throughout the Northeast. It’s not cheap: the price tag is $10,000 per academic year.

But for that money, parents can count on their away-from-home offspring receiving regular food deliveries, academic assistance, beauty and spa appointments bookings, aid in making dinner reservations, and assistance in signing up for gym memberships, apartment hunting, furniture building, party planning, doctor referrals, summer storage, as well as banking and bill payment support—and that’s just to name a few of the services offered.

From the CCS offices in Massachusetts, Kumin and her team of four “moms,” who all evenly share the responsibilities of their clients, are on-call to their students 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to take on the role of substitute parent when the kid’s actual mother and father are states, or in some cases oceans, away.

Said Kumin:

There are all kinds of things that come up for kids who are studying away from home. We’re there for them and they know it. They’re totally comfortable to let us know what they need—all five of us—we all know exactly what’s going on with each kid, how they live, their families, everything.”

However, her job, she asserts, isn’t to replace a young adult’s mom. Instead, she’s merely an extension of their mother’s love.

And since the dawn of CSS, three decades ago, which has taken on clients strictly via word-of-mouth, rather than formal marketing, the not-their-real-moms have accommodated the big and small needs of 30 kids per year, and have successfully maintained contact with most of them well after they’ve transitioned into adulthood.

Salman, 36, who now lives in midtown Manhattan and asked that his last name be withheld, told New York Post that Kumin and the moms offered him an emotional safe space when first relocated to America from Saudi Arabia in 2003 at the tender age of 16. He has kept in touch with Tammy and the moms over the past 20 years.

Once I had to have a very serious surgery. And I talked to Tammy about it prior to talking to my mom because I felt like I was free to confide in her.”

Echoed Tammy:

We’re here as lifelong friends who give kids and families peace of mind.”

Good stuff, but there is One who is better than a mother!

For my father and my mother have left me,
but Yahweh will take me in.
Psalm 27:10

God himself!

For You [are] the one who brought me out from the womb;
making me trust upon the breasts of my mother.
Upon You I was cast from birth;
from the womb of my mother my God You [were].
Psalm 22:9–10

And he is trustworthy!

SOURCE: New York Post