Confession: I don't think I'm a Real Mommy

Confession: I don't think I'm a Real Mommy

Every once in a while I have an ‘Oh SHIT I’m really a Mom!” moment. When this happens, I tend to frantically look over my shoulder, check the review mirror and listen carefully for the Mommy Police who are sure to come and arrest the fraud posing in jeans and sneaks by the minivan but who is really a hip young grunge girl from Seattle. Or a carefree ski bum from Lake Tahoe. Or a wild girl who loves to go clubbing. Or a collegiate athlete celebrating a win. Or…well, anything but the very Mom-looking mom driving a minivan full of kids.

I remember the day I brought my oldest daughter home. I’m sure what I remember is probably pretty similar to what all moms remember about that day: the tiny fingers and toes, the abject terror on the drive home that she would cry, then the heart-stopping fear that she wasn’t crying, the sense of happiness and fear and joy and fear and elation and fear and awe and fear. The pain in my breasts, hips, va-ja-jay, feet (I don’t know why my feet hurt, but after each birth I felt like I had hiked Everest, barefoot, over hot coals). But was I the only one who felt like a fraud? Was I the only one who wondered who had the bright idea of letting ME take that tiny little helpless being home? Did they know that I can’t cook without burning the water? That I hate cleaning toilets? That I once tried to paint the guest room moss green and instead it glowed like a nuclear waste dump? That I repeated the same mistake a year later in the bathroom with a blue shade reminiscent of the stuff in airplane toilets? That I can’t swim? What Mom can’t swim? What am I going to do during Mommy and Me swimming lessons: explain to the teacher that the lessons really are for Mommy and Me?

Of course, as all Moms do, I figured it out. I can now cook—Bon Appetite will not be doing a feature on my chicken stir fry, but I haven’t burned the kitchen down, either. The pain faded—although the hips and breasts and feet have never been the same. The happiness and joy and elation and awe are still there, balanced by frustration and exhaustion. The fear has only grown. Perhaps that is why I feel like a fraud: Moms aren’t supposed to be afraid.

My latest panic attack occurred on the way to swimming lessons. No, I never did learn how to swim, but it turns out if you pay more, you don’t have to do the Mommy part of Mommy and Me. Bonus: I don’t have to get in the disgustingly warm, urine-infused kiddy pool from which I recently watched a lifeguard fish out a somewhat-intact turd (they never did find the rest of it).

There I was, cruising 4 kids deep in the minivan, running the Wednesday carpool to swimming lessons when it hit me: “What the FUCK am I doing?!?”

Perhaps it was the dance mix I had cranked up—with all 4 kids bopping heads along to the catchy tune about paying a stripper for a blowjob--that tipped me off. What Mommy does THAT? Shouldn’t we be singing to The Wiggles, or the Alphabet Song, or Jesus Loves Me? Isn’t that probably what the mothers who (naively) entrusted their own little treasures to me for the ride to the community pool envisioned? Did any of them imagine instead all of us chanting out, “you spin me right round right round when you go down, when you go down down!” as the minvan bumped along?

I’m sure the other moms don’t do this. I’m sure they sing Jesus Loves Me, with the accompanying holy hand gestures, followed by advanced trigonometry problems involving the number of yellow Volkswagons on the road. Me, I taught my kids the ‘slug-bug’ game years ago and then had to buy a van with captain’s chairs in the second row so they would stop slugging each other. The little bruises they were giving each other didn’t look good.

It’s not that I didn’t picture myself doing this. All I ever really wanted—besides to marry Matt Damon and live in the Neiman’s shoe department—was to have a family. Just somehow, I could never quite picture myself doing the Mom thing. Can any young woman on the brink of Adulthood? We can picture the wedding (in obsessive, full-color, 3-D detail), the husband (in neurotic Prince Charming detail), the sex (in varying degrees of porn-and-Hollywood-inspired detail), the house, etc. We probably picture ourselves pregnant (in completely unrealistic detail that does not involve leaky pee or swollen noses), maybe even as a Madonna figure holding the Blessed Baby.

But do we ever pictures ourselves as OUR MOMS?

Because that is what we become.

Or rather, that’s what I was supposed to become. I’m still trying, but my mom is perfect. She baked cookies—mine still burn. She led the Girl Scouts—Brownies and such give me the creeps when they try to force me to buy their un-burnt cookies outside 7-11 as I’m walking out with a fifth of Vodka. She stayed home—I work. She DID sing Jesus Loves Me, taught me the hand movements and followed it up with various math lessons involving trees and stop lights. As a grandmother, she’s even more daunting: she’s graduated from cookies to award-winning fruit pies, baked from the fruit of her own trees that she harvests at midnight while giving thanks to the Goddess. She sews dresses for her granddaughters that put Hannah Anderson to shame. She does projects involving finger paint, plants flowers with the kids despite the mud and mess, grows a pumpkin patch for every Halloween and makes her own flavored and edible PlayDoh.

Is it really surprising that I seem to have confidence issues? Instead of reveling in this amazing role model, I just wonder how the hell I ended up with the Wednesday Swimming Carpool. Or as the Dance Recital Backstage Mom, stressing about colored tap ribbons and hair bows for 10 little ballerinas. Or the Birthday Party Planner. Or the one who says ‘because I said so’ with absolute authority and can easily find the match to any tiny pink-lace-adorned sock in five minutes at six in the morning.

The most confusing part is that I love it. I love it, and maybe that’s why I keep wondering where the Real Mommies are, because like most things we humans truly love, motherhood scares the crap out of me.

Other moms, the Real Moms, don’t seem scared. They just sail through their lives with calm, Madonna-like smiles on their faces, sweetly handing out snacks and leading sing-a-longs (I’m apparently really hung up on the singing thing). They happily watch their kids play for hours at the park and don’t mind pushing little bodies endlessly on squeaky swings. They love play dates, live for carpools and think all-day soccer tournaments on windy Saturdays are the height of living. Nothing—not spiders, bratty playmates, Mean Girl Moms or Costco shopping trips—intimidate, fluster or anger them.

Do I look like that from the outside? Do I appear calm and unruffled as I explain to Makenna—for the tenth time in three minutes--that there is no more snack…because she just ate it? Do I seem to sail through the throngs of sample-hungry shoppers during a Saturday Morning Costco trip, serenely placing my 85 rolls of toilet paper and 7 gallon jug of syrup in my cart? Is this why the other Mommies entrust me to playdates and carpools and birthdays? Do I look like a Real Mommy? If so, don’t tell anyone that I’m a fraud: HMM Honor.