Motherhood Uncensored

37.

I wept on my walk to the Metro station, lugging my small suitcase behind me, my eyes hidden by sunglasses only slightly out of place amongst early morning commuters. 

There was nothing extraordinary about the last few days, at least to an outsider anyway, that would necessarily warrant tears. 

I'm not quite sure whether it's the number of kids I have or the number I scrawl on the doctor forms next to the age question that has made me content with simplicity but its siren call is hard to ignore. 

The hot cup of coffee while still sitting in bed. A quiet dinner where the only interruption is the waiter with the dessert menu. 

The deep laugh that makes your stomach hurt like you just did a thousand sit-ups. 

You grow accustomed to the IMs, which become almost like side-by-side double beds, where we'd chat in the dark like high school girls until someone drifts off mid-conversation. Twitter is our dinner table, where we crack jokes and laugh, though our glasses and plates don't end up in the same sink when we're done. 

But then you get a taste of it, of friends now family and the joy that is just you and your dear ones, no facades, no masks, no judgments. No frazzled mom, no tired wife. 

"Hey there! I remember you, self," she says, staring back at me in the mirror as I paint my lips in an uncharacteristic shade of bright pink. "You're still around? Good. I haven't seen you in awhile." 

She's right, damnit. She's always right. 

I pulled up to my house with four kids jumping up and down on my front porch, then swinging open my car door and grabbing onto my legs like rabid koala bears before I can even get up out of my seat. 

I had nothing to show for my weekend save a shiny Tiffany necklace and a couple of very stiff legs, but I'd missed them, all of them.

"You look weird, mama, in those pink lips," my son said, stroking my hair as I held him in my arms. "But I like it." 

"So do I," I replied, catching a glance at myself as I walked in. 

So do I. 

Reasons my mom is yelling

I wouldn't stop singing Lumineers.

PS. It's not my fault they keep playing that stupid song over and over again. 

I didn't like the broccoli. Does anyone actually like the broccoli?

 

I peed on the floor. Again.

Which is usually what happens when you don't put a diaper on me. Again. 

 

I let the dog out. I was just doing what the song said.

 

I needed more water at bedtime. Next time lay off the salt on the broccoli, 'kay?

 

 

I have no fucking idea. 

 

I said "fucking."

 

 

 

I keep taking photos of her yelling. 

Touche'

Swim, baby, swim.

I did what I usually do when my kids do something silly: I snapped a quick video and popped it in a text message to my dear friend, a small consolation for raising my kids away from someone I consider to be my sister. 

Their aunt. 

I giggled at her response, but was then looked up from my phone to see a look of surprise on my daughter's face. 

"Did you just send that video to someone?" she asked. 

And then it hit me that she's almost nine, not nine months, sometimes a surprisingly hard distinction not due to her immaturity (quite the contrary, actually) but in my own mind, that still sees a baby, my baby, smiling back and me.

Her big adult-toothy grin snaps me out of it. 

I'm apologetic. Profusely. I promise her to never do it again, to ask her permission. 

She is well aware, perhaps more acutely than I'd wish, of how other see her and how she sees herself, which is both a blessing and a curse.

The mirror is no longer a source of entertainment, but rather a maginfying glass of self-proclaimed flaws, based on pretty princess pictures and Barbie dolls with nary a crooked adult tooth or oddly-placed freckle. 

And being silly is no longer cute, or cool, says the magazines and television shows where skirts magically shrink and girls are suddenly googly and giggly and exist solely to interact with the opposite sex. 

We corral them off, our girls and boys, whether we know it or not, and send them down their own rivers. And it takes a lot of strength and courage for a little person to swim upstream. 

As much as we praise "just-so" and "well-behaved" the greatest thinkers and doers and makers were hardly that. They were freckled and silly and swimming upstream, sometimes exhausted. Sometimes with people telling them to turn around. Or give up already. 

The greatest beauties never looked like a Barbie doll, one step above starvation. They had moles and belly fat and an actual ass, at least before we all decided that was ugly and gross. 

We're auto-tuning and photoshopping the magic right out of our lives. 

In the end, it is her story to tell, to share or not to share, her freckles to hide or wear proudly.

And my job to respect that and protect it, adamantly. Respect given, permission granted. Or not. The stories I've told of her from the beginning will be the last, at least here, anyway, 

But I will be there for her, holding placards, and screaming "swim!"

Swim, baby. Swim.