Sometimes I am SO TIRED of motherhood. I look at the clock when it’s time for my kids to return from school and I want to lock myself up in a room where they won’t find me. And there are days when I’m so glad when someone offers to take them for a couple of hours and hope I get sick in the meantime so I won’t have to pick them up so soon. Then I turn on the TV and see some ad showing a chirpy, smiling mother in full make-up and perfect hair at suppertime, her two boys joyfully stuffing themselves with canned green beans and corn. And there I am, hair all messy held up in one of my daughter’s Dora clips, looking like a panda with my smudged left-over make-up from the morning, at the edge of sanity as I try to stop Eva hitting Kieran with a DVD box, Kieran turning Eva into a goat with his Harry Potter magic wand (which is why she is hitting him), and Tristan thinking the toilet bowl is the perfect hiding place for all his favourite toys.
Oh and this is happening while I’m trying to convince them to eat salmon and spinach, instead of chicken nuggets or cold pasta “with only cheese” yet again, and while on the phone with my mother who has a problem with me never returning her calls because I’m too busy.
When they are finally all asleep against their will, I get some time for myself and a glass of wine later I ask myself… where are the normal mothers?? Take a look around at the images of mothers we see: they are either portrayed as a picture of perfection – serene, happily married to equally perfect husbands, never raising their voices, balancing bouncy smiling compliant kids on their high heels and fashionable business suits – or else they are pitiful mental cases that abuse their kids and deserve to be taken out of society. And I wonder, is there no midway between the fairy godmother and the wicked witch? Who is feeding us this myth of perfection and why are we – normally intelligent, thinking, creative women – falling for it?
Even when talking to other women we find it so difficult to admit that, in spite of our good intentions, sometimes we fail. We paint a lovely picture and even if we let it slip that we smacked those 5-year-old lips after they screamed “I hate you!” at us – we do it with a smile, downplaying the real impact of the comment which shot through our heart and fired all our buttons. We laugh it off, wanting/needing to appear in control in front of the other mums because after all we’re sure they never did anything like this and how would we be judged if we are not-so-perfect?!?
When we buy into the myth of perfection and do not share our real stories, all we are doing is perpetuating the myth and helping other mums build their own impossible-to-achieve standards. We are passing on to our children the idea that mistakes are shameful instead of an opportunity to learn and grow. My mother would argue, “we wash our dirty laundry at home” but by keeping that same analogy, how would I know how to take off that red wine stain all over my brand new sofa if I don’t tell anyone I spilled it in the first place?
So here it is – at the risk of having a social worker at my door dragging my much-loved kids into custody – here is my confession: there are days when I am a baaad mother. A wicked witch. A fire-breathing dragon. A time bomb ready to explode if one more cheerios lands on the floor… and it’snot even 8am yet. There are days when I look at the mess in my house, the garbage full of nappies, the toilet full of toys, the trucks and balls and oh-not-another-princess strewn in the corridor like war mines conspiring to trip me over my face, and I wonder… why did I not use 5 condoms on top of each other?!? Evenings when I’m looking for a pair of heels in my shoe closet and wonder when exactly was my closet sieged by tiny stinky sneakers and fluffy glittery slippers and High School Musical shoes and bags and where are my heels anyway and maybe I just shouldn’t go out at all because by now my mood is ruined.
There are times when I’m on the beach looking at perfect bodies of calm non-parents laughing (probably at me) and sipping wine while I’m negotiating actions-and-consequences in an attempt to stop a sand-flinging fight while juggling my 16-month-old who is obsessed with my breasts with a passion previously exhibited by adult men. And I scream at the top of my voice (no wonder they’re laughing at me…) for everyone to be quiet or we’re leaving!!
I’m not saying I’m proud of my feelings and actions but hey, it’s the reality. At least these situations give me plenty of topics to discuss with my kids when I’m feeling more sane, when we talk about how I lost it and how I could have done it differently. Not that I will necessarily do it differently the next two or three or even five times it happens, but at least it will hopefully teach them that it’s OK to screw up sometimes, and that we can always talk about it afterwards and feel close again.
Now I just hope that you won’t all leave me hanging here alone, and that some of you will respond with your own stories of imperfection so that when it’s all over, we can paint an honest picture of parenthood today!
Posted by whatmamaknows 
