The Neglected Caboose

The other day at soccer practice as I was talking to another soccer mom, she sat her 18-month-old on the sidewalk and poured a snack directly onto the sidewalk for her daughter to eat. The mom looked at me and must’ve seen some kind of surprise on my face, and she said, “What? She’s the third…you know how it is.”

Indeed, I do. A parent’s standards of safety, cleanliness and general supervision decreases exponentially with each child they have. The surprise that my face likely revealed was not that a parent was using a sidewalk as a plate, but surprise that she so brazenly did it, with no attempt to pretend-look for a snack cup that wasn’t there, and that she offered no apologies and, embracing the Nike spirit, just did it.

I mention this not as a passing-of-judgment on this parent because, as she so accurately pointed out, I do know how it is. I remember, shortly after Declan was born, stumbling on a parenting “cartoon” on Facebook. It showed a sweet baby and had the caption, “First child eats dirt. Parent calls doctor. Second child eats dirt. Parent cleans out mouth. Third child eats dirt. Parent wonders if she really needs to feed him lunch.” I shared it and added something like, “Fourth child eats dirt. Parent is not even aware child ate dirt because she gave up a couple years ago.” And that was shortly after Declan was born. In the two intervening years, supervision and general parenting standards have only gone from bad to worse.

Later children (which I will identify in our family as the caboose on the Crazy Train) are cursed – and alternately blessed – by the “neglect” that results from being born into a family with many children and exhausted parents. As my mother’s sixth child, I often joke that, by the time I was born (and after having raised my often-in-trouble siblings), my mother had pretty much given up. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had no curfew and would occasionally come home at 3 AM on a school night. My brothers and sisters were often up-in-arms about what they claimed I “got away with” and “how easy” I had it in comparison to them. In a lot of ways, I felt micromanaged because I was almost an only child, having come so many years after all the others, yet in many other ways I take some credit in raising myself, as a result of a mother who had, after the antics of a pack of siblings who grew up wild in the free-wheeling 1970s, gotten tired and given up.

I’ve had several chuckles to myself over the sidewalk-as-plate incident. While I largely view the ingestion of dirt, germs and expired food as an exercise in immunity-building, I know that’s not always a popular stance to take, especially among parents with fewer children who are still motivated by high standards. Still, it’s always encouraging to know that I am not alone in my laissez-faire ideas, and that there just might be other parents out there who don’t bother to pick the cat hair off the lollipop that falls on the long-unvacuumed rug.

I frequently feel bad for my boys, thinking they are getting the short end of the parenting stick somehow. Grace’s hair was always combed, she always had proper outerwear, and her clothes were new and clean. Nadia’s hair was almost always combed, she usually had proper outwear and her clothes, though hand-me-downs from Grace, were still in pretty good shape from all of Grace’s intellectual, gentle-on-clothes, supervised activities. Liam’s hair is frequently uncombed, he sometimes has outerwear (today, as we were fighting for him to wear a coat, I may have actually said, “Go ahead and freeze! I don’t give a rat’s patootey!”) and he has whatever clothes Grandma sends him. As for Declan, I can’t say for sure that I’ve ever combed his hair in the morning, and he frequently brings the coat to me to remind me he needs one. His clothes sometimes match but often have holes. At least he’s dressed, right?

Ah Declan…my poor, neglected caboose. Since he doesn’t know any differently, maybe he’s not even aware of his neglect. Maybe, just maybe, he will grow up easy-going and carefree after his childhood in our madhouse. Maybe he will be self-sufficient and capable. Maybe he will be a peacemaker and negotiator. Maybe there’s good to come out of the craziness and “neglect” he’s growing up with. It’s the conundrum of the caboose – the blessings and the curses.

I’ve decided my fellow soccer mom is my new hero and muse, and I keep thinking of her as a radical pioneer. Back in the day when I only had three kids, I am pretty sure I was still at least minimally concerned with “keeping up appearances.” What she did was akin to burning a bra outside a Miss America Pageant a half a century ago. I wouldn’t have dared to do what she did! What a free spirit she must be, comfortable in her own parenting skin.

Either that, or she’s just too tired to care. Her poor, neglected caboose...

The Chicken or the Egg?

It’s a classic chicken-or-the-egg scenario: Do we never want to take our children to public places because they act like animals, or do our children act like animals because we try to never take them out in public? It’s so hard to distinguish which came first.

Over the years, I have been startled at how closely children and animals are related. Kids and animals have their own distinctive, and frequently offensive, scents. Kids and animals are unpredictable…even the domesticated kinds (of both species).  Both have been known to fling their own feces. Both are frequently guilty of inappropriate, and inappropriately loud, noises. Both exhibit pack behavior and can be dangerous, especially if you stumble upon them when you are alone and vulnerable.  They have similar manners (or lack thereof), and neither belong in public places.

Take tonight, for example. Twelve days late, Mike and I worked up the courage to take the kids out to an actual restaurant to celebrate Grace’s birthday. Although we used to eat in restaurants pretty regularly – even when we had just two or three kids, we rarely do so now that we have four kids. Man-to-man defense was a much easier game to play, and we closely resemble a traveling circus pretty much every time we leave the house. We still do quite a bit for having such a large posse o’ children, but eating – even at home – is generally the least fun experience of the day. And dinner, as I suspect it is in most homes, is the most “adventuresome” meal. It’s not for the weak of heart or spirit.

We went to Bella’s, an Italian restaurant that is about as upscale as our small town has to offer (they have tables with chairs, in addition to booths!). Our first mistake was taking a table in the middle of the restaurant. For a family like ours, a dark corner, far away from other diners, is the ideal location. We are a loud, sometimes unruly, group, and a centrally located, brightly lit table is merely a stage for the drama to unfold, forcing other diners to serve as our unwitting audience.

Shortly after having ordered, which, for our family, takes about as long as eating the entire meal, Liam belted out a rousing rendition of Old McDonald. The entirety of it went just like this (in an off-key, sing-song tune): “Mick and Donald had a farm, and on him farm he had a cow,” (end sing-song voice and adjust volume to a shout), “I JUST FARTED!” I couldn’t judge the reaction of the other diners because I promptly buried my head in my hands and did not look up for an appropriately long time. I am confident I heard a belly laugh from the table next to us but I couldn’t make myself make eye contact with that table for the rest of their meal.

After some time coaching Liam on farting etiquette in restaurants, our mortification slowly subsided and small talk resumed. Then Nadia asked, out of the blue, “Do crabs have eyes on their shells, or on tentacles?” She has such a random mind, but frequently asks questions that remind me how little I know. 

The food arrived, which is always a hopeful event for parents, as food frequently helps occupy mouths so that fewer words come out of them. The downside of food is that it requires some basic etiquette, like using utensils, which is often lost on children, even those as old as seven. But the meal was progressing, dirty looks were dished out as necessary, and the end was in sight. Then Liam had a eureka! moment and announced, loudly, “When I get home, I need to poop!”

There was more face burying and head shaking. My eyes met Mike’s and the look on his face, with jaw clenched and a hint of madness in his eyes, said all there was to say. I wondered aloud why we continue to leave the house. Grace and Nadia snickered and giggled, and Liam offered another sentence or two about what a great pooper he’s become. And I realized that my family has become that family – the family that I might’ve sat next to 15 years ago and said, under my breath, “If those were my kids, I’d never leave the house!” 

How much I’ve learned about so many things – most of all, patience – in the years spent in the company of children. We keep leaving the house, even when common sense says we shouldn’t, sharing our little slice of craziness with those whose paths we cross. Though Grace and Nadia frequently say, “Mom is crazy!” I look forward to that day, well in the future when they are out with their own kids (who are misbehaving in all kinds of ways), that they have their own which-came-first epiphany, wondering whether I was out of my tree before I had kids, or if, just maybe, I had kids and then fell off the deep end.

51 Weeks Later

Fall is probably my favorite season, thanks in large part to all the fun, outdoorsy, family-friendly things to do. Likely for these reasons, it's been on my mind almost constantly over these last couple of months, though it's not like I ever forgot. But whether watching my small monsters carve pumpkins while wielding sharp objects and making a giant pumpkin-guts mess; or watching the posses of sugar-fueled trick-or-treaters roaming the neighborhood, my thoughts keep returning to the victims, and to the parents of the victims, of the Newtown, CT, school shooting last December.

As Thanksgiving came and went, those families were on my mind all the more as my constant thought throughout the month was how grateful I am to have a family that is happy and healthy and safe, and that I am grateful that my problems are small, in the grand scheme of things. Which is probably exactly how those families felt just last year at Thanksgiving, mere weeks before the unimaginable happened and the courses of their lives were forever changed.

It has been almost a year since that day, and the families have endured almost all the firsts…the first Christmas without their children, first Valentine’s Day, spring, summer, fall, birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and, soon, the first anniversary of the deaths of their precious children. The media focus, the community focus, the world focus that will be on them in the days leading up to December 14…I don’t know how they will manage it.  The grief they live with daily is unimaginable; to do so publicly in a country that watched them suffer and then couldn’t even pass any of the gun legislation they lobbied so passionately for is even more unfathomable.

When I think of the shooting, there’s one face in particular that comes to mind. His name was Dylan and his vivid, mischievous blue eyes were so beautiful. And, just as clearly, I see the haunted, devastated eyes of his mother. Her face stayed with me as the picture of heartbreak. A little guiltily, I am always so thankful that I don’t know that kind of suffering, and I hope I never do. But I am also always plagued with fear that horrible things happen to ordinary families. Families like ours. A year ago, so many families in Newtown, CT, were just normal people, living normal lives, when the most abnormal thing happened to them…randomly, without warning. The reminder that so much in life is completely out of our control is such a devastating, terrifying reality.

I was driving to Liam’s pre-school the other day to pick him up. I saw a man walking on the sidewalk with what I initially thought was a gun. On second look, it was a big L-shaped metal tool. But I see possible harm everywhere now, where is doesn’t really exist.  The horrors of that day in Newtown struck a fear in me that refuses to leave…the paranoia that a violent event can be waiting for me or my family anywhere, even in the least likely of places. When I walk into the kids’ schools, my first thought is “How unsafe this is.” There’s only one door that shields my precious children from the craziness in the world. I have the same thought at the gymnastics studio, at the community pool, at WalMart…that there’s no guaranteed way to stop a bad guy, should one of them arrive with a well-devised plan and lots of ammunition.

After a tragedy, there’s often a search for the lesson to be learned, for the ‘good’ to come from the bad. If there’s a ‘good’ anywhere in this, maybe it’s the threat of loss that helps me focus on the good in life and appreciate it all…especially those days, of which there are plenty, when I want to pull out all my hair and surrender myself to a facility with padded cells. I often remind myself that those parents would give absolutely anything to see their kid have a tantrum or make a giant mess or shove their sibling. The thought is sobering.

Sometimes I look at my children and their goofy little faces just choke me up. The delicacy of their features are almost doll-like, the long eyelashes like paint on porcelain. The sound of their voices and giggles are so precious; the intricacies of their personalities make each of them so uniquely special. I think of their potential, imagine their future. I can’t imagine them not having a future. This is the danger of loving. While the potential for joy is immense, so is the potential for suffering.

As the Newtown families approach the last of these “milestone” firsts, my thoughts are with them, as they have been all along. Their losses remind me that a day that ends with the well-being of my family is a good day. Their losses remind me to be thankful for all that is good…not just at this time of year, but every single day.

Being a Good Bad Role Model

In the shower this morning, for unknown reasons, I started to wonder if I am a good role model to the people I come across on a daily basis. As a parent of four and, as much as it pains me to say, a senior military spouse (“senior” in that Mike’s been in the Army for a while, and we’ve been together a lot of years), sometimes I think that I should be “setting the example,” whatever that means. Not necessarily for my kids, mind you…I think they know me well enough at this point to look to their dad when needing a role model. But, in our neighborhood, which is also a military community, I’ve been around the block a few more times than most of my peers, simply due to my ‘advanced’ age, and I got to thinking about how others might view me.

Almost immediately, I started to laugh. The idea of “role model” quickly fell away, as I thought perhaps the correct description of knowing me was really more akin to something out of a scared-straight program. “Look, kids! THIS is what YOU could become if you don’t clean up your acts!” Imagine tiny faces with wide, horrified eyes and terrified expressions. I don’t know why I found this so funny, but I laughed and laughed, and then I laughed some more.

A few examples quickly popped into my head…examples that, I am fairly sure, indicate I am NOT a role model, or at least not a good one. Recently, my mother-in-law sent me a book review. Its title? Moms Who Drink and Swear: Loving Your Kids While Losing Your Mind.  So, when my MIL saw the words “moms,” “drink,” “swear,” and “losing your mind,” her first thought was of me. I can’t even take offense because it’s all true. I drink, I swear, and often I do both at the same time. Frequently, I am confident I am losing my mind. And, apparently, I don’t even try to hide this.  Score one in the NOT a Role Model column.

Then, a few days ago, Nadia said to me in the car, “Mom, slow down. You’re going even faster than the school bus. You’re going to get pulled over AGAIN.” Of utmost concern to me in this sentence is the implication of the speed at which the bus driver hauls my kids around. Of course, if I had a bus full of kids, you can safely bet I would also be traveling at a high rate of speed, to get those kids OFF my bus. Of other concern: the fact that my daughter thinks I get pulled over a lot. I don’t know what qualifies as being pulled over “a lot,” but, regardless, she thinks I have a lot of police encounters, which sounds like another tally mark on the side of NOT a Role Model.

One day a year or so ago, while Mike was deployed, I realized I hadn’t seen my new neighbor in forever. I knew that her husband was also deployed and she had three small kids, of which the youngest was a newborn. I began to worry about her, thinking that maybe she was having trouble coping with the deployment and/or single-parenthood.  I decided I would soon go over, offer some guidance and “take her under my wing,” so to speak. Later the same day, as I had a complete and total crazy-woman meltdown over my role as single parent, Army-spouse, parent-of-four, I decided that perhaps the kindest thing I could do would be to NOT go over. What, I thought, could I possibly offer in terms of advice to anyone? More likely, seeing me in my beaten-down, sarcastic, grizzled-Army-spouse status might actually cause her to lose any hope she might have, as opposed to me being the shining example of well-adjusted wonder-woman I want to think I am.  For her benefit, I steered clear of her, thinking denying her my influence was the kindest thing I could do for her. Score one more in the NOT a Role Model column.

A favorite example happened a couple years ago. I was describing to a friend an incident that had occurred in my house. As I recounted the story that ended with a giant stain in my bedroom that looked like a Jackson Pollock painting, with cat vomit as the medium, and my subsequent unraveling into near-madness laden with an incredible slew of expletives, my friend looked at me soberly and actually said, “Sometimes I think I’m the worst parent in the world, but now I know I’m not.” I figure you could take this two ways: either I let her know that we all share the same struggles and we’re all, in fact, sort-of-normal as we deal (sometimes badly) with the crazy situations we frequently face as parents. Or…she’s not the worst parent in the world because I deserve the title. I think she probably meant the former, so we will score this one on the side of Role Model, since I haven’t been able to score anything on that side yet.

Plenty more incidents flashed in my mind…incidents in which I perhaps didn’t come off positively. I did a quick tally and simple math confirmed it’s much more likely that I probably am NOT the paragon of virtue I wish I were, or that I wish others saw me as. But, because I love silver linings, I decided it’s good to be true to oneself, even with all one’s imperfections. And then there’s this…being a bad role model can also be good (along the lines of “Scared Straight”), if it affects positive change. If I don’t always model good behavior directly, maybe people can learn something good from all my bad examples.  

Postcards from the Edge

the face of the summer vacation...are we having fun yet??

I can see the light. It’s so bright and beautiful, ahead of me in the near distance. I want to go toward it, to see where it leads. I know it can mean only one of two things. Either I haven’t survived this summer “vacation” with the kids and, somehow, I have made it to heaven, or it’s that proverbial light at the end of the tunnel that indicates I have survived the summer with the kids and that school will soon, soon, not-soon-enough be starting. Either way, there will be peace. Insert sighs of relief here.

August has arrived (Hurray!! Cartwheels!!! Twirl in mid-air!!! Skipping!!!) and, with it, the symbolic end of summer. Here in Kansas, there are 12 full weeks of summer vacation. Eleven weeks have passed and I am so pleased to proclaim that the kids are in one piece, as am I, and that only five days remain until I can triumphantly declare victory over 80+ days spent full-time with four kids, three of whom have mastered the fine art of pissing-off-your-siblings-to-no-end. Also conquered: a tonsillectomy and a 1400-mile, summer-vacation road trip.

Ahhh…the family vacation…the source of so many memories, a handful of which provide fodder for future therapists in years to come. I can’t help but wonder who first “invented” the family vacation, or how the idea caught fire and infected more people than the bubonic plague. The lure of the open road, the desire to make new discoveries, the quest for adventure…the idea is so American and so romantic.  The reality, of course – like all realities - is slightly different, especially when conducted in a mini-van with a three-year-old with a chronic case of why-arrhea.

This isn’t an earth-shattering epiphany, but I’ve decided vacations are like a photo album (the old-school kind). There are tons of photos/memories at the end of the trip, but only the best make it into the photo album/memory bank. My albums consist of the edited and beautiful photos that make me seem like a master photographer with a really expensive camera. The truth, of course, is very different, when only 48 of 647 photos taken were actually decent, without strangers scratching their ass in the background, photographer-induced decapitations, humidity fogging up the lens, etc. What’s preserved, at the end, is the best of the good, while all else is omitted and forgotten. Here’s my photo-album synopsis of our trip.

General stuff: I bought a new atlas (spiral-bound!). For me, looking at an atlas is sometimes even better than looking at the scenery, especially when that scenery is the very flat, dull, dry western part of Kansas. My new, posh atlas revealed some before-unknown Kansas treasures, like the Kansas Barbed Wire Museum (in LaCrosse, for anyone interested) and the World’s Largest Ball of Sisal Twine (in Cawker City, and NOT to be confused with the world’s largest ball of baler twine, which is in Darwin, Minnesota). Again, I am reminded: IT IS TIME TO MOVE, despite the giggle over things in Kansas that make it onto an atlas page.

Things seen: Wind farms. Dirt roads. Weed for sale. Nudity. Kansas has a lot of wind, and it’s not just because I live here, for anyone interested in making that smart-ass comment. Minimal trees, wide-open spaces, weather currents I don’t grasp…all this equals LOTS of wind. I knew the wind farms were out here, but they’re not in my east-central part of Kansas. It was very cool to see a wind farm for the first time, full of massive, countless turbines, harnessing nature for energy. Then there’s the dirt-road network. I have been startled by this discovery before. I come from a place where the very rare dirt road is surely a road to nowhere, a dead-end. If the road actually went somewhere, it would be paved. But, in Kansas (and many places, as I’ve discovered), there’s a hearty network of thriving, trafficked dirt roads; and these roads actually go somewhere (albeit probably to someplace rural).  Other sightings: a gift shop in Colorado with a sign that read, “A respectable joint, 25 cents.” I thought, What an odd endorsement. No one calls a place “a joint” any more. And why 25 cents? And then it dawned on me…they were selling ‘respectable’ joints, for a quarter. Also seen: an incredibly aggressive species of hummingbird that scared the bejesus out of us, and a naked neighbor enjoying the morning mountain air in his lawn chair.

Things heard: Nadia waking the entire house at 645 AM to announce her sighting of a doe and two babies. Unimpressed with our tepid, sleepy response, she said, disappointedly, “It seems like nobody cares.” In our defense, we all would’ve cared a lot more AFTER a cup of coffee and AFTER the crack of dawn. Nadia, again, as we were driving up Pike’s Peak, clinging to our side of the in-the-clouds, limited visibility, guard-rail-less, winding mountain road, looking over at the precipitous drop inches away from us, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Dad.”  And Nadia, again, having an epiphany at the zoo: “When people die, why don’t we just feed their bodies to tigers, instead of burying them?” I am curious what the inner workings of her mind look like, but applaud her dedication to recycling. On a hike along a creek as we plodded uphill, Liam proclaimed (with all the attitude a tired, unpleasant three-year-old can muster), “ME HATE THIS WALK!” He wasn’t even the one pushing the stroller. If only these kids would tell me how they really feel.

And that’s my album of snapshots. We ventured to Colorado. We partook in many activities and saw nature’s majesty up close and personal. We encountered wild animals – some of which were our own children, some of which were the kind with fur. We were intrepid and fearless in the face of having-four-kids adversity. Moments were challenging (and sometimes the moments were hours, or entire days or nights), but, in the end, we labeled it a wonderful time, sometimes in spite of and sometimes because of the adventures that children induce. Which sums up the entire summer vacation – and parenthood, in general – quite nicely.

Onward, towards the light!

The Summertime Blues

Call me delusional or paranoid; say I need to up my meds. But whatever you think, I think the kids are plotting my downfall. I think they are conspiring in their little-kid brains to partake in all the activities that drive me batty and, subsequently, to be rid of me forever after I am evaluated and committed. Summer vacation is only 12 days old and I've already developed a tic and a potty mouth to make a truck driver blush. Another 70 days of this and I will finally get my wish for a state-sponsored vacation complete with three square meals a day and my own private suite. 

Liam's contribution to this debauchery is a stubborn-streak a mile wide, combined with a refusal to poop in the toilet, or to poop with any regularity. I suspect that, at the rate he's going, he will have to interrupt his wedding to get himself a fresh pair of "unner," and that's only if he doesn't completely fill up with poop and actually EXPLODE at some point before then. Rumor has it, this anti-pooping mentality is not unusual in boys, but this doesn’t make me feel any better. I've had my hands in human excrement for so many consecutive years that it may, on any given day, be the straw that breaks this camel's back. Sort of related, and though I haven’t verified this with a medical professional, I think my carpal tunnel might stem from the repetitive motion of scrubbing out grimy underwear. I also suspect some of my mental exhaustion likely stems from trying to use Jedi mind tricks to will a three-year-old to poop. If there's anything I've learned in life, it’s that you can't make someone else poop, no matter how hard you try. 

Nadia's contribution to my emotional demise is, in all fairness, no fault of her own. She had her tonsils out last week and I think that says it all. What a way to start a summer vacation…some kids get to go to camp, Nadia got to have surgery! To put it mildly, she's not herself.  She loiters pitifully on the couch, digesting one Tom and Jerry episode after another. OK, that’s actually completely normal for Nadia, minus the pitiful demeanor. There's the occasional request for food, followed by immediate rejection of said food because "it tastes so bad," either due to my subpar cooking or, more likely, her sickly throat. She visits us in bed every night with a cough and whimpering and then climbs in next to me with breath that almost overtakes me, spreading through the room like a landfill-scented plug-in. We're a week post-surgery now, so there's the hope of better days soon.

Declan, at almost 17 months, has all of four teeth. So I suspect teething is the issue for his – and my - ill-tempered bouts of screaming, fit-throwing and general malaise. He has just discovered that he wants to be a stuntman when he grows up and I am always finding him in compromising positions, such as standing on the kitchen or dining room table, at the top of the bunk beds, "surfing" on our rocking ottoman, etc. Most of these adventures end with some degree of head injury, thus contributing to the ill-tempered bouts of screaming, fit-throwing and general malaise. During the moments when he's not working on his stunts, he dreams of becoming a make-up artist. His favorite drawer in the house is my drawer in the bathroom, where he gets into all of my makeup (recently having broken my new cake makeup, shattering it into a messy powder) and toiletries. For the uninitiated, 50 yards of unraveled dental floss is a mighty large pile of string. In his free time, he enjoys throwing toys into the toilet and smearing up the glass doors with fingerprints, drool and nose goo, which are absolutely two of my least favorite things. 

As for Grace, she suffers from a debilitating, chronic case of "I'm bored"-dom. Everything is boring, inspires boredom and results in boredom. Everything we have is boring, everything we get is boring, and everything in the world is a big, fat, boring disappointment. It's a little maddening, and fairly boring, to hear this complaint day in and day out. Her other contributions to my demise include being the messiest person in the world. Or, at least, under this roof.

Minus their individual skills, the kids often join forces, partaking in general squabbling, slapping, and, as a friend once termed it, the throwing of the no-fair flag. “No fair!” shouts Liam. “It’s not faaaaaair!!!!!” cries Grace. “No fair, Mama!” whimpers Nadia, softly, due to her impaired throat. I can almost see in Declan’s eyes that he is thinking the same, as I put an end to his latest head-cracking activity.

In moments of lucidity, I know there’s no conspiracy theory and I know that they’re just kids being kids, and that they’re actually pretty good kids, at that. But, in my child-induced haze of anxiety and paranoia, moments of clarity are few and far in between. And in those long hours and days of being vastly outnumbered in the ridiculously named “summer vacation,” I watch them warily, trying to combat their dastardly intentions with all the fortitude I can muster, in the hope of maintaining what little sanity remains, until the glorious start of school in the fall. 

The Quest to be Mother Martha Cleaver Mayer

About two months ago, a friend and I were engaged in a conversation about all of our perceived shortcomings. We both agreed that we wanted to be our own versions of Superwoman (my version: 5’9” tall, sings like a nightingale, speaks all the major languages, knows how to quilt), but often aren’t. She hadn’t lived up to her expectations of herself that day and was feeling inadequate. My “pep talk” included a detailed list of all the ways I had performed inadequately that day and in general, and some theories about how, as women, we are almost automatically destined for failure. In the quest to have it all and do it all (and, worse, to do it all well), we put so much pressure on ourselves to be June Cleaver/Martha Stewart/Marissa Mayer/Mother Theresa that, no matter how good we are, we never feel good enough.

In response, she started a blog called The (Im)Perfect Truth Project, celebrating the little things that don’t go according to plan, which are a much larger part of the day than the triumphs and things that go right. As for me? I had good intentions about a timely, introspective blog, but all I’ve accomplished in two months is lots of thinking-about-it. But in this period of mental marination, I think I am really on to something. I’ve decided our self-perceived inadequacies come straight from our genes. It’s all right there in the chromosomes...XX says it all. We’re just “wrong”…twice. It’s in our nature. So let the second-guessing of ourselves begin.

I think a hypothesis is supposed to be followed by some evidence (science was my weakest subject). And what better evidence to support my theory about all our self-perceived inadequacies than the Dove experiment that’s all over social media? In brief, a sketch artist listens to Woman A describe herself, and then draws her from her description (he never sees her). Then Woman B enters and describes Woman A to the artist. He draws Woman A again. Two pictures are made; then we see the pictures, as well as the face of Woman A. The sketch of the woman drawn from her description is always a homely distortion of herself, while the sketch drawn from the second woman’s description is fairly accurate. Woman A recoils at the image of her self-description, as well as her realization that her self-image is completely skewed.

On a small scale, I proved it myself just the other. I looked in the mirror and thought to myself, “I look lovely today,” which should prove that I am not insecure. And then I was inspired to do some affirmations, because I think it’s important to remind oneself some of the things that aren’t always verbalized. The next thing I came up with was: “There are many far-worse parents than me.” Talk about a backhanded compliment. Even when I am embracing the positive, it’s tainted with subliminal acknowledgement of not-good-enough.

Roseanne Barr once said something like, “If the kids are still alive when my husband gets home, then, hey, I’ve done my job.” And that, I think, was the standard for a while. There was no parental micromanagement and constant involvement. Was it worse for kids? Maybe. Maybe not. There’s probably a fine line between neglect and healthy laissez-faire. But then things changed. First it was societal – women’s lib and equal opportunity and you-can-do-everything-a-man-can-do-and-just-as-well – and then it was self-inflicted – a genuine need to justify the equal opportunity by excelling at all things. Self-worth became measured on much higher standards. Merely keeping the kids alive was no longer good enough.

I am by no means anti-equality and I don’t advocate a return to a 1950s ideal, but I do recommend low(er) standards in the quest for self-worth. It’s much easier to meet a goal when the goal is modest. Sometimes, it is even possible to surpass expectations regarding a modest goal. But when the bar is set high, it frequently won’t be met at all, and all that results are feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt.

It’s not that I have or recommend no standards, it’s just that the high(er) standards I used to embrace have fallen by the wayside over the years, either due to time restraints, other priorities or a certain not-giving-a-crap that seems to have developed with age. Very small examples: I used to consider being ‘on time’ as being a few minutes early. Now, if I am less than 15 minutes late, I consider that as being early. I used to consider something clean when it was disinfected, shiny and cat-hair free. Now, clean is a relative term defined by very vague parameters. I actually ate something off the floor in front of company recently. The other day, I wiped Liam’s nose with a sock (which had just been removed from my foot). A cleaner parent would’ve certainly gotten a tissue, but I’ve framed it as a resourceful parent using the tools at hand. I don’t think the event necessarily made me a worse parent, though it likely made me a grosser parent. But, at the end of the day, Liam’s nose was clean and he was still alive. So I did my job, right?

Repeat after me, ladies: Expect less, want less, pressure yourself less, have less, do less. Thanks to the XX chromosomes, I quite possibly may be wrong. But thanks to my low standards, I don’t really care if I am.