I hope this weekend finds you joyfully celebrating with your mom or kids–or both! As you know if you’ve been following my blog recently, I’m all about the moms this month. I’m blessed to still have both my mom and mother-in-law to celebrate, and celebrate with. This year, my sister-in-law joins the “fun”!
Fun, right!?
Okay, maybe a tad obnoxious to put the “fun” in quotes (did it again…), but you know what I mean. It really is a joyous job, but it does comes along with a lot of hard work and very little recognition. Which is okay, it’s not like you do it for the props or anything.
The other thing about motherhood–be honest and tell me in the comments section if you agree–is that it really makes you feel like you have amnesia sometimes. So consumed am I with laundry and homework and making meals that I often forget those times that “doing the laundry” meant buying new underwear to put it off a few days more. When “homework” was the freelance storytelling I did when I wasn’t at work. And “making meals” involved complicated dishes calling for “required-taste” ingredients…
When late nights meant staying out drinking with friends and stumbling into a cab at 4am. When shopping for clothes meant cute, dry-clean-only numbers I could easily slip into…and out of… A time when I could wear heels to bring me closer to my husband’s height (he’s 6’4″, I’m 5’4″–you have to imagine what I used to be able to teeter around on before I spent most of my time chasing toddlers…)
I miss that girl sometimes. (I think my husband might, too.)
But the woman who’s replaced her isn’t so bad. I mean, I don’t always recognize her, driving around in a Volvo station wagon and hanging out in playgrounds in the middle of the day instead of bars and clubs in the middle of the night. And last summer may have been the last time she had a pedicure (or shaved her legs–LOL… Sort of kidding…) And her shoes are terrible. But she’s got some redeeming qualities. I mean, her daughters are just awesome, so she can’t be too terrible at this new identity… Right?
When I wrote The Girl, the Gold Tooth & Everything, I wasn’t intending it to be a mother’s story. (Although if I’m to be honest, I’m not at all sure what I was intending it to be.) But within the madness of that story, this is just what emerges. A woman who used to know who she was, but in her somewhat uncharted universe of play groups and school drop offs, mingling with other mothers and dealing with the craziness of having small kids, she does not have her feet under her any more. Of course that’s not what triggered the amnesia in the first place, but it surely helps keep her in a daze.
In any case, whatever phase of this mad ride you’re on, I wish you a fun fruitful (in love and blessings) Mother’s Day!
Cheers!
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