Being a Good Mom & the Art of Being Invisible
Every year during my childhood my parents traveled together to Europe. It was a precious time for them to reconnect amidst the chaos of kids. For me, it inevitably meant some exotic souvenir from a place I one day dreamed of visiting – Paris, Geneva, Brussels. Anything from “over-there” seemed mysterious and exciting, with one exception.
I was in fourth grade and my parents had just returned from their annual trip. They’d bought my brother the coolest tennis outfit I’d ever seen. I held my breath as my mom reached into her suitcase and handed me a small, fist-sized gift. "Hmm…it’s too little to be a tennis dress,” I thought ripping open the paper. Time stood still. They’d been away from me an entire week and my beloved mom and dad had bought me....drum-roll…soap.
“Soap??? You got me soap??” It had to be a mistake. There had to be more. My self-pity was rising in direct proportion to the lump in my throat. “Soap?!?! Didn’t the hotel have anything better you could steal?” I see it as vividly as if it were yesterday-- the suitcase, the soap, the self-absorption. My mom had let me down. Ironically, it’s the gift I liked least that I remember most.
Being a mom is like that. It’s not the hundreds of things we DO each day but the one or two things we DON’T DO that get all the attention. My personal favorite after a long, hard day at work--“Why is there no toilet paper!” Heck, my cousin is still trying to live-down the time she forgot to pick-up her teenage son after his baseball game and he’s now out of college!
Being a good mom is not about getting or taking credit (seriously, I don’t even have time to fit that on my To-Do list). Being a good mom is understanding that, what you do is critical and at the same time totally, completely invisible. Like getting up in the middle of the night to put the covers back on your child, or carry her to the bathroom during potty training; or, changing thousands of truly hideous diapers and catching vomit in your hands; or, organizing closets and toy shelves until 4 in the morning; or stocking the right food and medicine and pool toys; or fighting to reapply sunscreen on a hot summer’s day.
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