Witness the work-from-home mother in the wild.
She parents! And makes a living! AT THE SAME TIME.
Alriiiiight, it happened. A troll made me mad. I know I said a few weeks ago that troll comments rarely get to me anymore - and really only do when they feel like they contain a little nugget of truth - but the other day someone asked who was watching my kids while I was in New York City shooting a pilot for a show, and I got all riled up.
Do not let this sweet face fool you; three-year-olds are masters of deception.
Ok, I'm going to need to ramble for a second because THREE YEAR OLDS, holy god.
Here is what just happened: I walked my daughter to preschool, as usual. As usual, she wanted to touch "the fluffy thing" (one of the fuzzy reeds that grows alongside the road in a particular spot along our route). So we did. And then we touched "the red thing" (an aloe flower). Then we went on our merry way, and just as we pulled up to school she burst into tears.
There are some places in the world that hold your memories as if they were people. A few of mine: the Wiccan shop that used to be in a basement storefront on West 81st Street, where a woman with long red hair and her HIV-positive best friend sold me candles and helped me figure out how to survive being a teenager. A terrible dive bar in the Valley called The Green Frog, where I learned to play darts and that I should never drink Jack Daniels. The entire town of Ogunquit, Maine, where I hunted for hermit crabs on the rocks at five, ate Strawberry Shortcake and lobster rolls on rickety wooden patios at fifteen, and then walked down a flower-lined aisle buzzing with mosquitoes (one of which was busy investigating my right eyelid) towards my husband at twenty-seven.
And the Cayman Islands; maybe there most of all.
It's the places where we vacation when we're kids that always get us through the heart, isn't it? I wish I had some wise thoughts that might explain why, but the best I can come up with is that our vacations let us be our purest selves at whatever age we're at, while still giving us permission to dip our toes into what came before and what's still to come. We get to hold on to our childhoods by playing in the sand just a little bit longer, and also get to have our first kisses just a little bit too soon. We get to play miniature golf with our parents, and hug them back when they hug us even though we think we're supposed to be too old for hugs - because really, who's watching?
I had this post I was planning to write today; a post about breakfast hacks. About how my kids have developed this habit of each requiring highly specific breakfasts, in addition to their highly specific lunches (I literally have to use my body to block their line of vision while assembling their sandwiches, or else there is a significant probability that my daughter will burst into soul-wrenching tears because I put the jelly on top of the peanut butter before placing the other slice of bread on top, as opposed to putting peanut butter on one slice and jelly on the other slice, and only then putting the slices together).
I know you know this already, but it bears repeating: The images that you see on my site - on many, if not most professional bloggers' sites - don't always reflect reality. When you see a photo like that one up there, you're seeing what my life looks like when I have lipstick on, and take the time to wipe down my countertops, and have a professional photographer present making sure that the angle of the shot doesn't reveal the crusty pots in the sink. Sometimes when my children are looking all sweet and happy in photos, it's because I've told them that sure, we can go see Peter Rabbit later, not because the food I made them was just so fucking delicious that they felt compelled to burst into spontaneous expressions of joy.
I like coming up with ideas for pretty pictures; I like creating them and editing them and crafting posts around them. Imagery is a part of my job, and it's a part that I enjoy.
But it's important to me to be crystal-clear about which parts are real, and which parts are just photographs that help me tell a story - because pretending otherwise helps no one.
I posted a video to Instagram Stories yesterday, and I'm really annoyed at myself about it. In the video, taken outside my son's piano teacher's house, I said that I had just realized that I'd forgotten to bring his piano music to the lesson for the second time in a row, and said it feels sometimes like my life is just one Mom Fail after the next. I forget the music. I'm late to pickup. I don't include vegetables in lunch (or dinner, sometimes). I love, love, love it when they're watching TV, because when they're watching TV I can breathe for a second.
The other day I ran into my friend as I was walking away from kindergarten drop-off - I'd been late, and had had to walk my son through the office (tardy slip! #momfail) - but she was later; so late that she wasn't even bothering to rush. We laughed when we saw each other - no words needed, because we've both seen each other be "that mom," the one frantically waving her arms and rushing past the horde of on-time parents walking in the other direction, yelling WAITWAITWAITWAITWAIT! while the door to the classroom shuts in our face.
Back to that video: My "I'm such a failure as a parent" video. I know that it's a teeny, tiny thing, forgetting your child's sheet music (even when you do it often). But as I dropped him off - flustered, my daughter crying from the car because she'd dropped her paper crown and couldn't reach it, hurriedly trying to explain during the second between the door opening and it closing again that it's totally my fault, I'm really sorry, I promise it won't happen again - I felt ridiculous, like a cartoon of a disheveled parent. Surely the "real" moms out there remember their child's music for piano class. Surely they don’t have to scream at their children to walk faster! in order to get them to class before the bell; surely they restrict screen time to an hour per day (weekends only!).
