Being a mom is great. We love our kids, we love to watch
them grow, learn things, and go from being babies to tiny humans. They begin to
have thoughts, feelings, and opinions. We spend their early years teaching them
the things they need to know and praying that the children we are raising are
decent human beings. Being a mother is wonderful! You were hand chosen for this
little person, specially picked to be exactly what they need! The day they are
born you celebrate with much gusto, and your hearts are full of love. They
smile at you for the first time, and all is right with the world. You watch
them take their first step, and you are so overcome with emotion and pride that
you shout it from the rooftops. “That’s my baby! He/She’s getting so big!”, and
then you’re on to the next thing. You celebrate every triumph and cry with them
through every tear, and it’s all sunshine and rainbows…until it isn’t. And we’ve
all been there too, haven’t we? Oh, you know what I’m talking about. You woke
up, had a cup of coffee that you only had to reheat one time, got everybody dressed,
and nobody lost their sandal just before you were about to walk out the door.
The morning was off to great start, and you say to yourself “Today is going to
be a good day!” You get the kids strapped into the car, you reach into the
diaper bag to pull out a sippy cup of purple for the 2 year old, and she stares
at you, but doesn’t take it. You look into each other’s eyes, and there’s a
moment of silence (I like to call this the eye of the storm) until all of the
sudden, she screams. It’s not just any scream. It’s the high pitched sound of a
child who wanted the PINK sippy cup, and YOU had the audacity to give her the
purple one. And, if yours is like mine, she goes in to full on meltdown mode
after just a few minutes and you begin to wonder if she’s crying about just the
purple sippy cup or if maybe somehow she’s remembering and channeling every
time that her little mind feels you’ve wronged her and using it in her fit of
rage. When these kinds of things happen, we’re reminded of the parts of mom-ing
that aren’t so great. And, if you’re like me, you wilt a little. You begin to
fantasize about bedtime and that bottle of wine in the fridge, quietly calling
your name. You’re not alone, because we’ve all been the victim of the toddler
meltdown for one reason or the other. Some of us are fortunate enough to endure
the meltdowns at home, some of us were given the pleasure of an audience at the
local grocery store, and still others made the mistake of offering the wrong
color cup at a restaurant having a nice family dinner. It happens. It’s so easy
to feel isolated in those moments when you feel like you’ve lost control. It’s
hard to keep moving forward when you feel like you’re failing at the whole mom
gig entirely. It’s in those moments that we turn to other moms for some sort
validation that we’re not screwing our kids up. We turn to other moms to hear
their stories, to laugh with them, to cry with them, and to complain to them.
Once we’re done, we set down our glasses of wine, pull up our big girl panties,
and try again. Parenting is a bunch of triumphs with a fair number of missteps
mixed in. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and that much is true,
but we’re lucky enough to be members of a nation. A nation of mommas who are
just taking it one day at a time, trying to get it right. A nation of mommas
who- just like you, really do stand at the cupboard weighing the outcomes of
pink and purple sippy cups, wondering whether the orange shirt or the green
shirt is going to cause an “on our way to preschool” meltdown, and mentally preparing
for the nightly bedtime battle. A nation of mommas who are just like us, who
are different than we are, and who just want to be cared for and understood. We
are part of something amazing. Something nurturing and constant, and what could
be better than that?
