This is a big deal for me because there is not a remotely recent picture of me anywhere on the internet.
Deep breath
Exposure therapy, here I come
Parenthood Is Overrated
Yeah, I said it.
Yeah I got three kids and I STILL SAID IT!
No, but really. I think it's overrated.
I know, as a mom, I am not supposed to say that. But frankly, most days I don't see what the big appeal is. I don't see what the appeal is of a lot of things. Marriage, for one. Parenthood, for another and I've gone and done both.
Now let me sidebar for a minute...
"I'll eat you up I love you so" is quite possibly the most accurate line ever created to describe the primal, obsessive love a mother feels for her children.
I sniff my children, constantly, literally intoxicated by their little dirty sweet stink, each so unique I'm sure I could smell my kids, like a lioness, if I were blindfolded and made to identify them.
Sometimes I look at them and the wind is knocked out of me, I find them so beautiful and so golden. And sometimes, I squeeze them desperately in my lap knowing that one day they won't fit, or they won't want me to hold them telling myself "remember this size, remember the little hands, remember the feel of the little skinny arms because they won't be here forever."
That being said: Parenthood is not fun.
How something can cause such feelings of failure and dissatisfaction and simultaneously be everything you live and breathe is completely beyond my comprehension. I'm not sure if there is anything else as maddening.
I've been a mom for eight years. I think I am doing a good job, mostly. But here are some things about parenting I have come to realize.
1) The scariest thing about becoming a parent is not how it changes you, but how it doesn't.
People enjoy rhetoric, I've noticed. Some people more than others. It's not hard, here in suburbia, to find a gaggle of ladies saying things like "Parenthood Changes Everything.” Well yes, parenthood does change a lot of things but it's doesn't change as many as you would like.
I have always cussed like Sam Kinison - from the time I was about eleven. Terminator 2 came out and little Eddie Furlong with his floppy, 90s hair was the cussin'-est little, scooter-riding bad boy. I thought he was awesome. I started cussing at will. I even remember the group of kids I hung out with in elementary school, all the kids whose moms actually had jobs, who had to stay in after school care - all delighting in this new form of expression I had made available to all of us. It wasn't long before we were all exclaiming "shit!" during dodgeball and calling each other "jackasses" on the monkey bars.
That didn't change as I grew up. And now I have kids and I am a cussing mom.
I don't cuss at them, typically, but I cuss around them. And now, they have potty mouths. Case and point:
Child #3, my mini, keeps climbing out of bed with reason after reason to NOT go to bed. Exasperated, I exclaim:
"Young lady, I don't give a damn, you need to get in your bed!"
To which she responded, "I'll give YOU a damn!"
Parenting fail; yet funny nonetheless. And thankfully none of them do it in public or at school and know not to cuss around their conservative family on their father's side...shit, I could only imagine.
So you see.
You're a mom. You still cuss. You still have a short temper, maybe even shorter. Or you are not as active as you said you would be. Kids don't come out and wave a magic wand that completely changes your personality or your husband's. Just FYI.
You're still lazy. He still watches porn. You still smoke. He can still spend six hours playing X-Box. Come to terms with this now.
2) Almost every mom as had an "Angry Mom Dr. Phil Hidden Cam" moment.
It is unnerving watching those shows, with the screaming moms throwing tantrums. But here's what people don't realize:
Sometimes the mommy meltdown is an effective strategic ploy. Here's how I use it:
The kids are fighting like crazy. I have tried every legal discipline strategy imaginable: time outs, quiet corner, writing "I love my sister" 100 times, moving a paper clip on a naughty chart - all that obnoxious, exhausting crap. But still it continues:
"He took my toy!"
"She called me stupid!"
"She hit me first"
"I hate you!"
"I HATE YOU!"
That's when I cue the mommy meltdown. It usually goes like this.
“YOU ROTTEN CHILDREN ARE DRIVING ME UP A GODDAMN WALL!!! EVERYONE GET IN YOUR ROOM! DO. NOT. MAKE. A. SINGLE. SOUND! NOT ONE! NOTHING!!! UNTIL TOMMORROW!!!"
Then I hear them all gasp and giggle and whisper
Mom has gone mad, they think.
We should do something nice so we can get the hell out of this room, they plot.
Usually at this point, they work together to clean the room to perfection – a love offering to buy their freedom. Mission doubly accomplished. The kids are friends again and they cleaned their room.
Without chaos there cannot be peace, yes?
3) You don't have time to teach it all but you have to get clear about what you do want to teach.
My generation, as parents, is inundated with self-help psycho-parenting theories: Tiger Mom Parenting, Attached Parenting, Crunchy Moms, Helicopter Moms, Authoritative Parenting, Permissive Parenting - it goes on and on.
Many parents I know are constantly educating (and berating) themselves on how to be an effective, loving, nurturing parents. However, it still seems there are parents out there who are just...doing whatever. Just doing what they feel at that moment, willy-nilly, all the time. I don't really agree with that. Here's what I think:
There are probably 50 qualities you would like to really, deeply, teach your child. Respect, Integrity, Ambition, Love of Nature, Grace under Pressure, etc. But you have time to focus on, say, five to ten before they are out on their own. It's as quick as a flash.
You and your partner in parenting have to get a super clear idea of what traits are most important to you and you have to discuss, openly, the Issues that both of you are dragging from your own childhood experiences into your current parenting practices.
Maybe you were given tons of gifts, but no attention growing up. Or maybe you got neither, so you drown your kids with both.
Either way, too many parents simply never discuss it and spend the precious and terrifyingly brief eighteen years they have arguing and second-guessing and squabbling and then poof! The kids are gone and that's one more parched, dysfunctional adult walking around.
It's work. It's hard, hard, hard thankless work. Sometimes it's crazy hard and the hand drawn hearts and love notes aren't cute enough. Sometimes you want to take a nice long bath and let yourself get pulled down the drain, cartoon style - riding that pipe to a new life in a new place.
But you can't.
This is the life you chose. You have to wear it. You force yourself to enjoy it. You learn to find joy in the bad knock-knock jokes and the school plays. But sometimes, when you're not thinking about "the life you could have had" and your guard is down, your son lovingly twirls his fingers in your curly hair, and looks at you with his dreamy gray/brown eyes and says some romantic nonsense like "Mommy, if you died the whole universe would move because everyone would hear my sad love cries."
And then you realize that even though your life is not particularly meaningful to you it's everything to someone else...and sometimes that is enough.
Jesse/Jessica
I actually wore makeup, like, four times this past week so pat me on the back. I’m still having a hard time rectifying the really tomboyish, masculine part of me with the female part of me.
I know what kind of girl I wish I was.
I wish I were the kind of girl who got her nails done, who was smallish and smelled good all the time, who wouldn’t think of leaving the house without makeup, who cowered into some alpha-male’
s side during horror movies. But I am soooooooo not that girl.
I stink most of the time. My nail polish is always chipped. I hardly ever leave the house with makeup. And I am pretty sure I have never dated a male who didn’t secretly want me to be his mother, forcing me into the position of protector and wound-soother. This wouldn’t be such a problem if I actually wanted wounded-artsy-whiner boyfriends but I completely don't!
I like alpha males. A lot.
And girly girls make me seriously uncomfortable. I feel so awkward in groups of women as if I'm doing “being a woman” incorrectly. The whole scene is just awful. I just have a lot of residual masculine energy.
The combination of not having a male authority figure growing up and my marriage to a feminine energy male has caused that part of me to develop – that missing male part – and the rest of me to take a back seat.
If there was a “How to be a Girl” class, I swear I’d take it.
For now I feel like a really brusque, emotionally detached, animalistic, bawdy enigma. Maybe, I’ll be able to cultivate it into something really lovely and attractive one day.
Work
I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to make this work. The cost of after school care for three children is about $900/month. How would I pay that and my rent? Right now we are coasting on the hundred dollars here and there that I get from my ex-husband. We eat a lot of beans. I actually contemplated becoming an escort. I also thought about selling my used panties on EBay...
Things are less than ideal.
Big Fat Liar
I confess. I'm a big fat liar. I do want to get married again eventually...I think...
Maybe I just want another wedding - anyone who attended mine can tell you it was a blast.
But I am so scared that no one will ever want to date me so I keep lying and saying I "hate marriage" because "don't get it" and "don't believe in it." But the truth is that I have fantasized my wedding to various fantasy celebrity boyfriends at least a dozen times.
But I have three kids.
THREE!
FUCKING.
THREE!!!
I went out to eat the other day with his mom (I didn't pay for it) to have a delish half sandwich and soup and the little shit-head line cooks were like "Hey, check it out, that girl's hot."
Then another one goes "Pfffft, three kids, man. No way."
OH MY GOD!
Loser-ish line cooks at Random Sandwich Cafe think I have too many kids to be dateable!?!?
NO! NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!
Not! Okay!
NO!
And then there's the other end of the spectrum. Say I meet a guy and he's like "Three kids, wow, no problem. I love kids. I can't wait to meet them."
Then I'll be scared that he's a molester! I mean, this is Florida. I would be so suspicious of a guy who was okay with my having three kids that I would probably turn him over to the police within minutes.
Ugh, a conundrum.
But apparently, there are guys dating single moms.
My single mom friends go on dates. Personally, I don't have time to brush my fuggin' teeth let alone go on a date. Plus I've only been on one that I can remember. The guy hit on me at Barnes and Noble. We talked for hours after he gave me his number. We went to dinner and saw a movie.
Then as he was driving me back to my car I noticed the carseat in the back of his SUV. He had three kids, apparently aged eight, six, and four.
"How old are you?" I finally asked.
"Thirty-seven."
Um...I was fifteen.
Awkward.
And illegal and gross.
I'm lying again, that's not the only date I ever went on but it was the first. I think my ex-husband took me out a few times in the beginning.
But then there's that hideous single-parent double standard.
Single dad = Aww, how sweet, taking time for his kids, dedicated father
Single mom = Same ol' shit
Fuck my life. I think the ideal scenario would be a long distance relationship that spans decades like in Brokeback Mountain. Goin' on "fishin' trips" and making out in the woods and havin' hot, dangerous anal.
(whoa, sorry...got carried away)
But, alas, I think for the next couple of years my only romantic partners will come with batteries.
And another alas, actually, I can't even keep those around because my kids are too damn sneaky and I wouldn't know where to hide one if I had one.
Ugh.
.I miss makin' out.
Sequins and Leopard Print
I was folding clothes with my oldest child, Jaya (rhymes with papaya, not that complicated) and she dropped a knowledge bomb on me:
“Mom, all of your pajamas are really colorful like pinks and oranges and yellows but your, like, real life clothes are all black and gray and dark blue. It’s like you’re secretly exciting but don't show it.”
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?!?!?
Ugh, she’s right!
Sidebar: Am I ever right these days? Seems everyone else is.
In my head I am all sequins and leopard and red and hot pink and punk rock and glam and nose piercing and more tattoos. But on the outside I am Frumpty Dumpty professional mom in discount jeans and a wide variety of black, gray or navy V-neck twofer t-shirts.
Sometimes I get crazy with a flower headband - always in black though. What the hell is that about?
I mean it, I’m not about to say something really deep and inspiring. Seriously, what the mother eff is that about?
I went shopping today to help look for a big girl job. Any job that requires me to actually talk to people and actually wear something other than yoga pants and flip-flops is currently out of my reach. I’m pretty sure I haven’t had to wear heels in over a year and I only recently started wearing clothes that weren’t workout/pajama hybrids.
Anywho, I went to the Maxx – because that’s what broke, er, frugal people do – and I got a cool Calvin Klein suit. Then I went shopping for some shoes because I purged myself of all sexy shoes sometime in 2008. I hit the DSW and found some awesome mustard yellow pumps. They were so amazing. They were also in teal.
I didn’t buy them. I was afraid to buy them because I knew I’d be too insecure to wear them. Wtf?
Instead I bought some moderately interesting yellow and gray leopard pumps – I know it sounds more interesting, but trust – they are not.
Guess what else? I wussed out on the red lipstick, too. I bought several, all of them frightened me. I wear a darkish mauve-ish color on the ONE day a month that I attempt to look older than nineteen. Lame.
So all the balls and gusto and sparkle I think I have has apparently fizzled and I am not, at all, closer to putting myself together than I was in Feb when I started this idealistic attempt at reinvention.
Buh.
I need a RuPaul’s Drag Race drag queen intervention.
A Different Boy – April 2011
My six year old son is a different boy.
He's still snuggly but he's also angry. He hits his little sister and he destroys things. I woke up late at night to find him burning black holes into the carpet of his bedroom with a lighter he'd taken while his father was visiting. He draws all over the walls and cuts his clothes to shreds. Thankfully, at the very least, his behavior at school is okay.
He seems to be saving all the anger for me.
We often end the evening in screaming matches and I dig my nails into my palms to avoid spanking or slapping him.
A few weeks ago he asked to be called by a new name. He picked “Jacky Jake.”
“But what's wrong with your name?” I asked.
“I never know when someone is talking to me. Someone calls my name and I come and it turns out they were talking to Daddy or Papa” he answered.
He had a point. He was named after his father and he was named after his father and he was named after his father.
My son was the fifth with his name as if he was part of a monarchy. I never wanted that to be his name and his father only halfheartedly so but we felt obligated to and obligation is the love currency in his family so like a good daughter-in-law I obliged.
“Okay,” I said, “but Jacky Jake is a bit complex. Can we just call you Jack? It's a very strong name. Kind of a hero's name. Or a wily, charming kind of character in a romantic comedy.”
He considered it and smiled to himself.
“Okay. I want to be Jack from now on.”
He paused and looked me in the eye.
“I really don't want anyone getting me mixed up with Daddy ever again.”
My son is a different boy.
Mothers Day Lamentation – May 2011
So last week was crazy emotional for me. Specifically, Mother’s Day was a complete mind fuck.
This is the first Mother’s Day I’ve experienced as a single mom. My ex-husband never cared about Mother’s Day, so it’s not like I was missing the attention and affection that most wives experience on Mother’s Day. You can’t miss what you never had.
But, my ex and I had a really tumultuous week – lots of drama and fussin’ and all that as we adjust to our new roles.
Frankly, I really hated him last week. But I can only spend so much time complaining about my ex before a part of my brain says, “Yeah, but YOU married him.”
The guilt and shame and embarrassment I feel for having wasted the last ten years – all of my twenties – trying to make a miserable, fear-based marriage work sometimes overwhelms me. It became especially acute as Mother’s Day approached.
I wouldn’t be a mom had I not been plagued with terrible self-esteem and an insatiable addiction to male attention. That’s nothing to celebrate.
Pancakes Taste Like Poverty: And Other Post-Divorce Revelations Page 3