The "Awful" Truth

It has come to my attention that I have completely snowed a few people. Some friends and acquaintances that read this blog have mentioned that they feel they aren’t doing enough as mothers, or doing it “right” when they read some of my posts. I thought something along the lines of, “holy crap, have I been making stuff up?!? How will I make it clear that I’m NO Mother of the Year!?” So, first of all, here are some pictures that might help…

This is my kitchen counter. It’s hard to tell because there are so many dishes and other random things covering every bit of the surfaces. My kitchen may not always look this way, but it does a lot. In the right-hand photo, if you look close enough, you will see evidence of a trip to McDonald’s! The horror! See? I’m not all organic all the time, no way! Also, please note that there are no children in these photos. That’s because they are in the living room with Curious George so I can “clean up the kitchen.” In actuality I’m ignoring them while cruising cyberspace. I didn’t intend to, it just happened. It does often because the computer cries out to me as I start to do dishes, saying things like, “hey, you could talk to grown-ups on here!”

I also ignored the kiddos while chatting on the phone. To the extent that Miles dumped his honey mustard on the floor in an attempt to get my attention, but I just kept talking while the two of us wiped up the mess. So then he tried again by whipping french fries around the dining room. I stayed on the phone, figuring Tia could clean up the mess later, when she comes in the house. I justified this by thinking Tia would like this surprise french fry treat.

We ran errands all morning. One of the errands was to get Miles some summer slip-on shoes as he currently has none. I boast about being so anti-commercialism but I still bought the REAL crocs rather than the just-as-good Target knock-offs. I don’t know why. Except for that I had a coupon (falling for the marketing trick).

In most every day there are a number of things just like these. Things I’m not proud of, but things that basically keep me sane. I love these kids, everyone knows that. I do right by them as much as I can. Sometimes “as much as I can” isn’t that pretty. I’m just the same as any other mom, really. I am generally as positive as possible. Which for most of us is a really hard thing to be. After all, there isn’t much energy for positive thinking when everyone in your home needs a piece of you all the time, even the dog. I read something recently by a mother of a newborn that says it better than I can:

“If I had a profound thought on motherhood it would be simply how great a mother’s capacity is to love and care for her children. It turns out that I’m not as selfish as I thought…I understand now what a burden a mother carries. I know too what a blessing that burden is.”

-we’ll call her “Anonymous” (for now).