When Age Sneaks Up

When Age Sneaks Up

I used to have a friend, Penelope, who had four kids and always seemed perfectly pulled together, like June Cleaver in size zero rhinestone-studded jeans and stilettos. She was typically the team mom, and she’d cook breakfast for the whole class on the first day of school. She also competed in triathlons and made charming scarecrows from milk jugs. I bet she didn’t have any moldy vegetables in her refrigerator either.

                                                           

     “Perfect Penny,” as I’d sneer in a nice way, consistently kept her composure and never threatened to run away like I did. She never yelled at her kids and always remembered to throw away the  Halloween pumpkins on her front porch before they caved in. That’s because she was much younger than me. In my thirties, I did it all, but lost my sanity and memory in the process. Back when I had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn, I could’ve medaled in Olympic multitasking. I was Flo-Jo in baggy sweatpants running the race of my life every day. Except for the running part. 

I could put a toddler in time-out in the supermarket, estimate the cost of my groceries, soothe a sick baby, and decide which AP classes my two-year-old needed to take to get into Vanderbilt, all without forgetting when the dryer would finish so my clothes wouldn’t sit and wrinkle.  Now I can’t even contemplate about how my thighs rub together without overflowing my coffee cup. 

                                                           

I used to rock at reading maps as well, but age has stolen my geographic intuition.  Sometimes I rely on Sasha, our evil GPS home wrecker with the sexy voice. She lurks in my dashboard and leads me down dark roads that end with 500-foot drops. My husband says I just misunderstand Sasha. He’s enamored with her because on trips she doesn’t wake up and scream at him when he veers slightly onto the rumble strips fringing the interstate. Just the opposite. No matter what happens, Sasha always sounds like she’s leaning on a barstool in Mexico, exhaling a ribbon of smoke from a Marlboro Light. I’m sure she is much younger than me too.

Through the years I also lost any coolness I had. When I snap “self-takes” on my phone, my kids immediately tweet to their friends about how weird I am and how they’d go live with Amber if it wasn’t for the fact that I buy them stuff. I guess I am pretty cool at the mall—especially in my track suit when I do my early-morning power-walking.

My kids don’t realize that they are the ones who made me old. When they eventually move out of my house, I’ll exude my old vibrance. I’ll have hobbies and watch R-rated movies. I'll go on girls' trips and do the Macarena with my friends. I’ll be Flo-Jo again, making up for lost time. Except, of course, for the running part. 

Confessions of a Real Mom

Confessions of a Real Mom

I’m not nearly the mother I dreamed I would be.  I’m too frazzled to be a room mom.  I detest cooking.  And since I have anger management issues, I yell at the umpires in middle school softball.  But I’ve recently discovered a mecca for brilliant parenting advice.  It’s a place where you’ll find tips from more obsessive supermoms crammed into one space than in the dressing room on “Toddlers & Tiaras”—the self-help shelves at Barnes and Noble. 

This magic aisle boasts hundreds of titles written by successful “real” moms instructing us slacker moms on the secrets of how to do everything from organize and delegate to go green and get rid of stubborn belly fat.

Those cool ladies also usually write blogs with charming names like “glitzysupermom” or “marathonmomof7,”  in which the overriding themes are “I’m OK.  You’re OK.  I’m just better than you, hon.”    

They make me wanna crawl in a hole with my Cheetos and Ho-Ho’s.   

The truth is, I’m intimidated by the over-achieving moms on book covers—the way they can run a corporation, communicate without screaming, make playdough out of dryer lint, and wear those skinny jeans.  How do their teenagers turn out so perfect?  If I were to try to implement their Five Easy Steps to Help Your Teen Express Herself, my daughter would probably respond by getting a Guns ‘N Roses tattoo and wind up on Jerry Springer.

If those pundits of self improvement, smiling at me from the bookshelves, are indeed as accomplished, confident, and slender as they claim,  I probably couldn’t relate to them anyway. 

I like a mom who, with frosting on her lips, fibs that it was Dad who ate the last piece of birthday cake.  I can identify with the frazzled mom who wants to lock herself in her bedroom in the middle of the day after a horrifying trip to Walmart with two preschoolers and a sick baby. 

I’ll bond with the mom who goes to the bathroom in the stall at Target holding a crying baby and her purse on account of there are no hooks on the door and who’s begging her toddler to get up off his hands and knees and stop sucking a receipt up off the floor.  That’s the seasoned veteran I’ll listen to.  She is real.  She is an inspiration.

Give me a mother who threatens to tie her teenagers to the top of her SUV’s luggage rack the next time they mercilessly ridicule her for simply tapping her fingers off-beat to the radio.  One who doesn’t bring weird vegetables for her kid to eat at playdates to impress the Oreo-packing moms and insist, “My son, Willow, would rather have raw okra than anything else in the world!”  Puleeeeeeze.  I guess he’s never had chocolate syrup then.     

I don’t think I’d connect with an “I-can-do-it-all” female dynamo who writes self-help books about things like relieving stress and taking charge of your life.  She would probably share her coping strategy with me instead of a gallon of Rocky Road.  

You can bet your sweet mac ‘n cheese she’d claim she doesn’t have cellulite either.   That’s because she probably teaches 5 a.m. Extreme Spinning classes at the gym.   I have an annoyingly energetic friend like that who posts all her athletic accomplishments on Facebook. She touts that she exercises because she likes to push herself—which sort of makes me want to push her down.

Truthfully, I don’t have much time for exercise or social media—except to stalk my kids on it.  An average mother can barely keep her head above water, much less find a working pen in her house and write a book.

As a matter of fact, “real” moms don’t write a lot of books.  They’re too busy making dinosaur dioramas and scrubbing permanent markers off the carpet.  They’re on their knees blowing bathtub bubbles and butterfly kisses, and pouring out anxiety and fear to the God of high fevers and brand new drivers.  

“Real” moms are teaching their daughters how to stand up against the wave of public opinion and how to ride out the rip tide of teenage emotions.  They are engrossed in their son’s school play, and they’re reveling in their daughter’s double-play.  They’re teaching their kids to take baby steps and sometimes leaps of faith.   

And there’s no where else they’d rather be.

So, to all my under-achieving sisters sloshing in the trenches of motherhood, it makes me feel better when you admit that you’re addicted to Reese’s Cups, that you don’t have all the answers, that a glass of wine makes you happy, and that you’re flying by the cellulite in your pants just like me.  

And for the record, I most certainly did not eat the last chocolate bunny from the kids’ Easter baskets.  It was Dad.