"Mom, how am I going to keep my
soap from getting soggy at school?"
"Uhm....we'll get you one of
those travel soap box thingys?" "But then it will be wet after my shower & the soap will be weird!"
"Ok, honey, we'll get you some liquid soap then."
"No, I don't like the liquid kind, I like the kind you buy now..."
& so it began. The ultimate hunt for the travel type plastic soap dish that came with some type of a draining component that would keep the soap from getting soggy. Because you know they make something like this, right?! Because it’s for soap people.
Soap.
And lets be clear, soap is like...clean! So it’s not like soggy soap would breed germs. Right?
But my child CAN.NOT. Get past the idea of soggy soap. EVER. Or at least not for the past 3 weeks…
and so the night before we leave to take her to college, she is in deep discussion with her dad over....yep. You guessed it, the darn soap!
I'd like the record to reflect that
I was on my "A" game. Totally.
Printed car tag. Check.An extra one, just in case? Check.
Welcome week activities, locations and times? Check.check.
I'm crossing "t's" and dotting "i's" like I was born a type A. I own this crap.
Except for the soap dish thingy that my compulsive #2 is still talking about. That, I do not own, nor could I find, nor think they even make anywhere in the world!…
My mind is echoing the quote, "The one thing she learned is that there is no way to be a perfect mother but a million ways to be a good one..." Echoes through my mind.
A million ways...except for the soap thing!
Lord knows that I have shed at least
a million tears, not that I have ever done the math,...but it averages out to be about 153 tears a day, but I doubled
and tripled down on my tear flow during some of our drama to make sure that I
was covered for the drier days! No lie. Totally serious. Cause life got real
around my home...and I realized really quickly that with #2 & her awesome personality paired up with me
and my awesome "laid back, let’s talk about it tomorrow and see how we
feel, and if we don't feel it, then hey!, lets just blow it off" personality...tears
were going to be a plenty..like from day 1!
Beautiful and painful all rolled into one messy
home.
...with extra estrogen.
because God needed an example of comical, painful, with a whole lot of real...and thought, "hey, angels, gather round...let's land over on the Moore fam...they will never know what hit 'em! this will be fun!"
Evidently, someone, somewhere, needed humor, and that family they could point to and say, "well, it could be worse, we could be like them!"
So, Let me break it down...(which is
far better than the actual breakdown I had to endure.) When you birth a laid
back baby...you think, "look at me, and how I am so awesome and so blessed... but no! Heads up: Prepare for the future because its a trick!
They turn into strong willed, black and white because there is no
grey..(that was just an accident of mixed NON-colors), I need a plan, I need to
NOW, I need exact times,dates,expectations...type of child.
It happens overnight.
You go to
bed. You wake up and they look at you and say, "Are you ready?"
“For what?”“You said we were going to the zoo.”
“I think I said we'd think about it.”
“Nope. You said....”
…& I swear it's on. Like Donkey Kong.
You can fight it, but really, surrender
is better. Why fight a battle you can't win.
Looking back, the time seems to
lapse from moment to moment, one minute we are crying over dioramas...DIORAMAS!!
(seriously,
just stab yourself now! It's an art project for moms, only I don't do art. I bribe
crafty-art-mom friends to do art for me... Look, all I’m trying to say here is I know my
limitations. bottom line: beware the DIORAMA! its the life-slayer, tear provoker, of mothers everywhere.)
and the next minute we are crying
and because we are afraid we wont make the volleyball team. (*note:It was 7th
grade, and in the end we made the team,-Thank you Jesus!- but i had endured a
week of feeling like I had totally failed my #2. as in EPIC mom
F.A.I.L...but c'mon now, who knew people were putting their kids in volleyball
at 4 years old?! Please, go ahead and just stab your other arm now.)
Anyhooo....#2’s High school years brought:
heartache, friendships, homecomings, the ever ridiculous-over-the-top Texas
size mum...(get a gun or start stabbing your legs at this point, or better yet just butter-up all those super-crafty-mom friends because mums are yet another art project for
moms to look like losers! Sigh..i totally should have seen that one coming.) then there are sports, betrayals, pep-rally’s, silly girls
laughing and cooking til the wee hours of morning, some hard seasons of lonely
that a mama can't cure, (oh, the drama of it all!)...first dates, break-ups,
early morning tournaments, lifelong friends, Tuesday Law & Order
marathons...(hey back off and don’t judge, my girls have learned a lot about protecting
themselves through this quality time together! *Shout out to Detective
Benson!)...queso dates, a little fb/twitter stalking on occasion...very rare...okay maybe a lot..., more queso
dates..football games,"family" dinners...late night talks, and the
ever favorite-marble slab (cause marble slab is appropriate fro any occasion - heartbreak to happy: its a sure thing! trust me.)
Overall, It's called estrogen and life.
And we
were kinda heavy on the estrogen part around here...with a sprinkle of life to keep it real.
As a preemptive strike, my man learned to sleep with a
pillow OVER, (Yes, I said OVER), his head.
Seriously, it was his only choice for survival with all
the words and emotion. He’d shout out
the occasional and ever helpful, “hey, be nice to your mother!” or “well Pen, did
you tell her you would…?”
Hey man, cool it back there before the pillow smothers you in your slumber...let’s not even go there…I was
merely trying to appease a child that could outsmart me…it was desperate times,
and I used all survival techniques necessary! Back off!
But let me just add this…with
conflicting temperaments comes chaos and eventually...change. (and in case you
were wondering, I got tagged for the most likely to need changing.) It was fun.
Good times if you’re into painful therapy stuff.
Sooooooo, change I did. Therefore,I find it ridiculously unfair and wrong that after modifying my life to adapt to my #2, that she totally has the nerve to up and pick a college that is just far enough away that I can’t really make a day trip! Three words for you #2: You’re dead to me.
Okay, not really…but this is just a million kids of wrong. and you know it!
...But yet, deep down, really really deep down, (like, so far down I can’t find it right now),I do know it’s right.
and for my #2, it’s the perfect fit and the fulfillment of her life-long dream (which is so much like my dream....well...okay, not really...but anyways...)
For the record: I hate Perfect Fits! Booooo!
The morning of “the Ripping” (as it has affectionately become known) we left
our house at 5am for our scheduled 9am move, it was easy.
We loaded up and hit
the road…only she was in her car behind us.
Tear...but just a few, cause
people: I’m a rock. I’m stone-cold emotionless. I own this day and I will be awesome…and
brave…kinda.
We totally got there on time and got
her room put together and only had to make 1 stop for something we had
forgotten. She liked her room, which was like a double win for me.
We went out ate lunch, and I acted like this was just another normal day in the life of the Moore fam. I am a great pretender in moments like this…again a rock. A solid rock. A weak, crumbling, pathetic, rock. I hate rocks. Rocks are stupid.
As we were getting closer to time to
say good bye, my tears were just below the surface…I knew this would be tough…but
I’m back to being a rock. But not really a rock, more like a clump of clay that
got all wet and mushy that was supposed to be a rock. I think this day totally sucks
butt right now, and I am so done with ROCKS!!
So I resort to my last option of
toughness and I begin working hard to drudge up memories of when I was mad at
#2… and lo and behold, this clumpy, wet, clay, stupid, rock could NOT think of one!
I’m all like, memories don’t fail me now! I dug deep, way, way, back, yet all I could
come up with were precious, funny things…tender moments where she was all sweet
and perfect, just the awesome and beautiful things that I so love about her. I was full on
Hallmark, without the card. Pathetic.
I am brilliant so I think to text my other momma friends
who are in the same place. I am confident they will send some much needed funny my way. But
they fail me, EPICALLY
(Listen up: YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!! and its only because I’m
such a good Christian that I will not out you individually on my blog! Just kidding…sorta.)
Instead these so called friends send words like, “dude, its
rough…I got nothing for ya”
And I’m standing here all like, Seriously,
now?! Then I get…“Good luck friend, this is worse than any loss I ever suffered”
Omigosh…throw a girl a bone here people…
“…alcohol is your friend……worst day ever, the loneliness alone will kill ya…”
Fellow mothers, future mothers, and Mothers with children who will turn on them and choose college away from home and not the awesome greatness of your home, please be warned: your other mother friends in the same boat are absolutely worthless in this moment…they are mushy, wet, clumpy, pieces of dirt…you cannot, I stress can NOT, count on them.)
I am utterly alone, and I muster up all my clumpiness, which is more like mud at this point, and mash together a semblance of “hey, it me, just your regular ol’ normal-yet-cool- mom”…and its pretty bad. its just plain ugly. But whatever. I’m in survival mode, and this is war.
We send #1 to fill up the truck
while we said our goodbyes…only #1 gets all off track and pulls a fast one on me and jumps out of the
truck to hug the heck out of her baby sister…then she leans in and whispers
sweet words…
(look, she could have said, “you are a mean, horrible, sister and I hope you
get in trouble”…but if so, they both covered very well, and smiled for the
picture…so I’m totally going with “sweet words.” I mean, we are hanging on by a
thread here people, and we are still hoping to keep our “normal family” image
up!)
So, #1 drives away and we proceed
upstairs for pictures and goodbyes.
We sit on #2’s bed, and take a few pictures.
We say our, “I love you’s”...and then she turned and looked at me and softly
said,
...wait for it...
“I’m really going to miss you mom.”
And.I.am.finished.
The rock, the clumpy clay, the dirt,
it is all gone and there is nothing but a watery mess.Explosive, popping out your eyes, full on waterworks from here on out.
I am in a full out free fall.
I am in TMF...of absolute EPIC proportions.
definition: (total.mom.faiI); this is where experienced moms highly recommend medication and possibly alcohol. If you reach this point you are in danger of no return to normal. You are done for. In order to save yourself and recover you must pull the emergency card and resort to the new mom motto: Don’t be strong, be armed.)
Honestly, somehow in this moment I think I managed to mutter out fragments of consciousness that sounded like, “love you…(tears), you’re great…(sniffing, tears, snot slipping out) miss you so much..(controlled
It was pathetic….my man filled in
the blanks for me, “your mom is going to
miss you a lot…she really loves you so much…I’m sorry she is such a freak and
can’t pull it together right now…” (okay, he didn’t say that last line, but I totally
would have given him a pass if he had.)
It was painful. Grueling. This was definitely
“The Ripping.”
We, (meaning me), pulled it together, walked
downstairs.(5 flights, cause we don’t do anything easy friends!) where #1 was waiting
for us at the curb.
#2 was headed to her first welcome
week gathering…and as she turned to head to the lawn, I hugged her one last
time, breathed her in deeply with my eyes closed so as to hold her scent deep
in my lungs forever. And then, like any good mom, I whispered,
”I could totally home school you
through College…its really kinda stupid anyways…just keep that in the back of
your mind…okay?” - ( and I meant it!)
She giggled a little and walked away…I
watched her…it was so much like kindergarten I can’t even stand it…
my#2: a
little anxious, a little fearful, but shoulders set back and her eyes set on
the future with hope and excitement. I kinda see a little bit of me in her walk…a
little bit of, “maybe I’ll just go with the flow, see what happens…make the best of
the unknown…”
People, I don’t want to brag or
anything but my #2 owns this new chapter of life.
She is every bit Psalm 146:11…beauty fir for a King...God’s
love and mercy shining on this girl.
is she Perfection? No.
But Beautiful? pshhh...shut your mouth! ...you just can’t
even fathom it!
Quick Prologue:
As we drive away and the tears fall
silently, I begin to think of how I can create a soap dish thingy for #2. The
very idea of her having to deal with mushy soap has me completely overwhelmed
and I am google-ing different variations on the word. I start to gush tears, yet again, when I actually
realize what I am doing. In some weird way i find myself thankful to God for
giving me #2 and making me a little bit of a better person, and most
importantly bringing me 1 step closer to reaching the million mark of a perfect
mother…
Sincerely yours,
Motherhood is DEFINITELY not for Sissies...but if you are a sissy, I will be your people..
aka
~Penny
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.