Lunatic, Liar, or Mom?
Those of us walking around calling ourselves mothers could easily be mistaken for lunatics. Seriously, the guilt alone from forgetting to drop Lily off at piano lessons or not nursing Ty until he could drive, is enough to weigh down a small burro. But then you start to add the real maniacal moments like when I first found my husband carrying my baby boy in a Baby Bjorn and doing the dishes at the same time. I mean, holy crap, that would send anyone over the edge, right? Isn’t it obvious that this multi-tasking in the male gender is to be treated with suspicion at least and horror at most – well, as a mother, I chose horror. What if my son fell out? What if he was emotional damaged from being reduced to assistant kitchen scullery maid? What if my husband got it in his mind that he could replace me and I was unneeded in the family (I mean, afterall, he was tending the child and doing the dishes) Like I said, lunatic.
As for Liar, that is a bit more complicated. I think we moms and wives actually lie a lot. And let’s face it, telling the truth can be really overrated. It did not work to my advantage when, after seeing the movie Troy, my husband asked me if he looked like Brad Pitt (I kid you not) and I, well, told the truth. “Not even close, honey… not even close.” The look of utter disbelief and betrayal on his face snapped me right our of my truth-telling high and I quickly countered with, “But I am sure by the time you are 40, you’ll be a spitting image of the god Achilles, uhem, I mean Brad Pitt.” Remarkably, this little gem seemed to work. I cannot remember the last time I told the truth about one of the worksheets containing triangles, squares, and circles with chicken-scratched pencil marks along the photocopied edges that my kids bring home from school to show me. I say, “Wow, good job, you are amazing!” And my kids do do a good job and they are amazing, but this is hardly represented by a worksheet. But, isn’t it my duty to pretend it is? I don’t think Lily would ever quite recover if she came home to show me her schoolwork and I said, “Explain to me the pedagogical objective that your teacher accomplished by giving you this work and which of the state’s learning requirements does this meet?” Or, even better yet, really get them thinking with, “What did you learn about yourself by doing this busy work?” I am guessing that going with the “WOW, Good Job” is better suited for the psyche of a 10 year old little girl.
The more powerful lies are the ones we moms tell ourselves. We tell ourselves that we can do it all, that we can do it alone, and that the endless hours of taking care of everyone else won’t really take its toll on us. We tell ourselves that the burnt toast tastes as good as the yummy golden brown one we just sacrificed for our first born. We claim that we don’t mind that we turned in our sporty red BMW for a mini-van and that our children don’t really define who we are. We lie about how much we need our husbands to understand us and our girlfriends to validate our choices. And we lie to ourselves that we will ever ever be able to have a flat stomach again — because the truth about that one is just too much to take.
But the truth is this. That when we become mothers we are transformed. The old passes away and we are a new creation. We understand viscerally the meaning of sacrificial and unconditional love. And in this state I think we would willingly forfeit our lives so that our children can live richer fuller ones than we ever had. A lunatic? A liar? Nah, just a good mom.
