Quite a while back, one of my closest friends (betsy) and I would get together every once in awhile to write.
We never did much with the articles so I thought I would share them here so they don’t go to waste.
And actually, revisiting them makes me want to write with her again….but she’s all super busy being a PAID writer/editor.
Lucky Duck.
Sigh.
I’ll have my day.
One day.
Okay….so.
Moving on.
This article is all about Mommy Guilt.
But, I’m sure you have NO idea what that feels like!
~~~~~~~
Before you have kids, people will tell you all sorts of things. For instance:
“Sleep now, because you won’t get any rest when the baby comes.”
“Appreciate your body now, because you’ll have stretch marks and pancake boobs after the baby comes.”
“Go to the movies now, because after the baby comes, the only thing you’ll be watching is Elmo.”
“Go out to eat while you can, because after the baby comes, you won’t even have time to eat.”
And yes, Mamas, that’s all true.
There’s one thing people say that isn’t true, though:
“Make sure you travel, because you’ll never go anywhere after you have a baby.”
That’s right-we said not true.
We can guess what you’re thinking: What? I can barely make it to Target with the kids, let alone travel.
Well, read on, sisters. Because we do more traveling than Cher on her latest farewell tour. We’re talking about guilt trips.
Let’s explore:
These days, I (Summer) take guilt trips hourly. In fact, I sometimes find myself getting jet lagged from the back and forth of it all. Today I went on more than I count. For example, take this morning. I was sooo incredibly tired and I just couldn’t wake up.
A “good” mom would have sucked down her coffee, then proceeded to put aside her own issues and make homemade pancakes, eggs, and fresh squeezed orange juice.
I am not that “good” mom.
I’m the kind of mom who puts a cup of milk in the fridge, has the TV already set to Noggin, and whose child knows exactly where in the cupboard his breakfast granola bars and banana are waiting for him. And said child takes his breakfast and juice to the couch, turns on the TV, and quietly waits for his mama to get it together.
Which is what Taylor did this morning.
Guilt trip number 1.
Then about an hour after waking up, Taylor had already used up his quota of words for the entire day. (The quota is an amount I deem necessary for my sanity.)
I had heard enough chatter. One more word was going to send me to my Xanax.
(And don’t pretend you don’t have it hiding in a cute container in your purse, too!)
Whoever said we women talk a lot had apparently never met a toddler.
I mean, honestly, what was I thinking, teaching him to talk?
Actually . . . I may have spoken those words out loud.
Quite loud.
In fact, I think I said,
“HONESTLY TAYLOR, WHY DID I EVER TEACH YOU TO TALK?”
Yeah, that was it.
Again, not what a “good” mom would do.
Guilt trip number 2.
Sadly, today wasn’t unusual.
In fact, by lunchtime, I’m usually up to my 500th guilt trip and am severely jet lagged.
When dinner rolls around, I’m near tears because I don’t even know which time zone I’m in anymore.
One of the worst ones is Guilt Trip Number 284: “Not wanting to play cars or hide and seek (unless I’m hiding in bed with my laptop and my door is locked while he’s seeking), or really anything kid-related all day long.”
Instead, I collapse on the couch and say, “Seriously, can’t you go play by yourself for a while?”
Ugh! You see, just typing that out and confessing such horror makes me cringe.
I just want to cry.
In fact, I need a moment.
Your turn, Betsy.
Summer, did you steal my example?
Because I had the same experience this morning.
When I rolled out of bed today, I was pleased to discover that my husband had already turned on Noggin.
(Blessed Noggin. We love our On-Demand cable!)
When Lily asked for breakfast, I stumbled into the kitchen and gave her a cup of dry Cheerios. And when she pleaded, “Mama, come watch with TV with me-you can bring your computer,” I sat on the couch with my laptop and fed my Facebook addiction while she watched about five episodes of Toot and Puddle.
The TV watching is one of my big guilt trips.
Another one is the fact that my daughter eats the same five things every day: dry Cheerios (she doesn’t want milk with them); Dinobites (totally processed chicken nuggets that you can buy by the hundreds at Costco-but least they’re protein); mac n’ cheese (the Trader Joe’s kind that’s ready in 3 minutes); apple slices (with the skins cut off-otherwise, she’d be getting her vitamins and she certainly doesn’t want that); and every kind of cracker available.
I do try once in a while to feed Lily something new. But she usually whines and cries for her peanut butter sandwich (that’s another staple-and no, I don’t use the organic peanut butter), and I just don’t have the energy to fight it.
I also suffer from Guilt Trip Number 171: “My Child Looks Like One of the Orphans from Annie.”
Since Lily usually wants to dress herself, and since I usually don’t have the energy to fight it, I often let her out of the house wearing a stained flowered shirt two sizes too small, a striped skirt, her flower girl dress shoes, her ever-present black velvet headband, and unbrushed hair.
This wouldn’t be so bad if Lily’s hair weren’t so crazy, but it’s out of control.
Honestly, she looks like a homeless child if I don’t brush it thoroughly three times a day.
Which I don’t.
Not only that, but I forget to brush her teeth sometimes and conveniently forget to give her a bath.
For three days in a row.
Fortunately, Summer and I have the good fortune of living in a neighborhood where the other moms don’t judge (out loud).
But it’s not easy when I actually leave my neighborhood and we go to a chichi part of town, where the moms iron their kids’ clothes and dress them all in white.
There, I feel like Britney Spears probably did when she was caught walking out of a public restroom without shoes.
Total white trash.
That’s when I beat myself up and think, I’ve already let myself go, and now I’m going to drag my child down with me! Sigh.
But is that just me, Summer?
Yeah, that’s just you, Betsy.
With a boy, I (Summer) can just shove a hat on his head and people will think he’s stylish.
Little do they know it’s because he hasn’t had his hair washed in two days and/or his cowlicks are out of control and I’m too lazy to spend the hours it takes to tame them.
But I can’t say I feel much guilt about that.
If Mama doesn’t get to shower every day, nobody gets to shower every day.
I’m all about equal rights around here.
Maybe we see the grooming thing differently, but otherwise we could go on and on.
Yes, we all probably all have guilt trips about not being consistent, about not having the slightest desire to volunteer in our child’s classroom, about not reading to them enough but instead buying books on tape, about setting up constant play dates so that our children can talk to someone else in the house besides us, about making a memory box (read: shoving things in a box) instead of spending years on a custom scrapbook made with love, about using the phone or Skype to have a friend entertain our child so that we can read a chapter of our book quietly in the bathroom . . .
Oh, and speaking of the bathroom, do any of you feel guilty about hiding a bottle of wine under the bathroom sink?
No?
Oh, okay….
But seriously, the guilt trips just never stop.
In fact, as we were writing this, the kids came in and asked if we could help them color.
Without looking up from our laptops, we both muttered, “Not now, we’re writing.”
Sometimes we just feel overwhelmed by all the things we’ve said and done during the day.
And it leads us to think we’ve totally failed and that our children are going to need years of therapy to undo it all.
No, we’re not those perfect moms.
Instead we’re “that kind of mom.”
The one that gets the sad looks in public from the “good” moms.
(You know who you are.)
We bow to you.
We really do.
We’re the kind of moms who will never need to travel again, because guilt has taken us far more places than a passport ever will.
So tell us: where have you gone lately?
© 2012 “Le Musings of Moi”
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