The Perfect Mom

Ok, so I'm driving the girls to school earlier this week and listening to a bit on the radio where the DJs are disucssing a recent episode of Oprah. It seems Oprah invited mothers to expose their deepest, darkest mothering secrets and the women felt free to open up to millions of viewers. One woman confessed that she had made complete lunches out of the snacks she found in her car on the way to school. Sounded less like a confession and more like the incredible accomplishments of Supermom to me. Then there was the woman who confessed that her children had pizza for breakfast a few mornings a week. There were maxi-pads for diapers and babies not being bathed for three weeks at a time. I was amused by some of the confessions and stunned into silence by others. Some of their confessions made me feel normal and I admit that some made me feel maternally superior. For about a minute. And then, with the help of my 13-year-old, I recalled some of the things I had done (quite recently) that leveled the playing field.

I'm not the perfect mom. The thing that makes some women uncomfortable with that is that I don't care to be. It's not important to me to be the perfect mom. Never has been, never will be. It's important to me to provide a safe, happy, healthy and balanced childhood experience for my little ones. I learned somewhere about the fifth month of my first pregnancy that my life was no longer about me at all. I accepted that fact sometime last year. Oh, yes, it's been an interesting few years. I can remember when I used to turn my nose up just a smidgen when I was forced to sit near the family whose children appeared to have been raised by wolves. I remember the absolutely flawless "hmph" I would serve up to any mother whose children were the slightest bit noisy in the local department store. Oh, yes! That was me. I would inch ever so subtly to the left if the baby with the messy hands reached out to touch my designer jacket or unbelievably pricey purse. Hey, look, I'm not proud that I did it. I'm not saying it's right. Just that I did it. But the best (yep, it gets better) was actually confronting mothers about their parenting skills or lack thereof. I had it all together so I could afford to judge those mothers. You probably have guessed by now that I had no children during this phase of my life.

Motherhood certainly changed me. I have three children. Two were gifts from the womb and the other is my bonus baby, a wedding gift. He came in a package with my husband. He isn't my favorite, although the kids and the husband would beg to differ. He's just different than my girls. My girls give me a run for my money every hour of every day. Raised by wolves? My 13-year-old was ousted from the den because of her incessant chatter and the five-year-old backed the den mother into a corner one time too many and, if my sources can be believed, the den mother has been nursing her thumb in the corner of a padded room in a psych ward ever since.

Being a mother has challenged every iota of my being every day since I joined the motherhood. I've forgotten money for school trips, lost school library books, washed and dried laundry early on a Monday morning, given the kids caffeinated drinks the morning after I kept them out too late and threatened to take away toys for the rest of their natural lives (all the while wondering where that saying came from and what is the opposite of a natural life anyway). Oh yeah, the hypocrite in me has chastised the kids for listening to music I really like dancing to.

Perfect? Not even close. I'm in the motherhood now. I understand.