Perfectly Imperfect

I found myself in a new position last Thursday night.  The kids were in bed and asleep.  The house was quiet.  And I was frantically working to finish the alterations that Charlotte’s dance costume needed before her dress rehearsal Friday morning at 9:30.

As I worked, pulling my needle and thread through the clear plastic straps on the outfit, securing a snap,  I told Jason that I wasn’t sure that I’d ever felt more like a mother.  I wonder why it’s in the stress of last minute things to ensure that everything goes just right for our kids when we feel our most mother-ness.

Not that I don’t feel like a Mom every day.  I do.  Little baby hands wrapped around my neck.  Little girls holding my hand and as walk.  Eskimo kisses and lullabies.  I feel like a Mom — a Mommy — every day.  But most of the time those days aren’t accompanied by feeling like a Mother.

A Mother.  A Grown Up.  Someone who is fully in charge of her kids and knows what she’s doing.  Someone who can do things like alter dance costumes and who has a home cooked dinner on the table every night and who knows what to do when her newly turned 4 year old ends up with an eye that is rapidly swelling at her birthday party.  I rarely feel like that Mother.

Most days I’m content in my Mommy-ness.  My kids don’t ask too many hard questions yet.  I can look up answers on google as to why it thunders like the best of them.  Other than keeping them safe and alive, there isn’t too much that stretches my abilities.  I rarely feel like I have all the answers and am not very grown up but right now I don’t have to be that grown up.

And then something “grown up” like tacking my little girl’s tutu to her poodle costume and adding snaps to it just like the dance teacher instructed catches me off guard.  And reminds me of the startling truth.

I AM A GROWN UP.
I AM A MOTHER. A MOM. AMOMMY.
I AM IN CHARGE.
I AM SUPPOSED TO KNOW THE ANSWERS.

This is my life.  I’m not WAITING to grow up.  I AM grown up.

When did that happen?!?! I wonder if my Mom felt like this when she was my age.  Do others feel like this?  Someone please tell me that I didn’t miss the introduction to grown-up-ness lesson that occurred when you got pregnant with your first child.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been forced to grow up a lot.  Nothing that is major in any sense of the word, but caused me to buck up and act like a Mama.

Surely no one is prepared to handle what happens when you pick your child up off the bouncy slide at her birthday party and look down to see the area about her eye swelling rapidly and turning purple.  AND YOU CAN’T HAVE ANY REACTION other than “It’s ok” because YOU’RE THE MOM!

Making sure that my daughter is psyched about her new purple glasses that she’s getting all the while praying every second that she never has to deal with kids who tease her because of them.

Have you been to a 4 year old checkup?  They give four shots at those things and they aren’t a joke.  It’s painful having to hold your little one down so that she’ll be safe from diseases.  And when she still has a faint black eye while you’re doing it it doesn’t make it better.

And then to watch her walk onto the stage at her dance dress rehearsal that she’s been so excited about since last year and have her crying “Mommy! It’s too loud!”  It’s too much.  My heart broke.

And so, in typical Mom fashion, I tried to rise to the occasion.  We spent the next 24 hours visually walking through what would happen at Showcase.  Talking about what she would get if she danced on stage (a little bribing to get them to be brave never hurt anyone!).  Talking about how I always got butterflies in my stomach when I was about to go on stage in a play and how Abby, grown up, idol Abby, told me that she still gets nervous before she goes on stage.  I tried to blend the fact that it was no big deal and that we loved her exactly the same even if she didn’t make it on the stage or made it on the stage and didn’t dance with the fact that this was her only chance this year to dance and we didn’t want her to be disappointed later.  We encouraged her to be brave like we knew she could, but reassured her that we were proud of her no matter what.

Time moved on and as I sat in the audience in front of a huge black stage and a huge audience, watching little feet move under the curtain I looked at my Mom and told her, “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”  And she looked at me and said, “Me too.  Welcome to being a parent.”

Then the curtains parted and our little poodle was standing there in her poodle pose with a huge smile.  She waved to us once and then got to the business of dancing her poodle dance with all of her heart.  And I cried.  And was so proud of her.  And even prouder when I picked her up and she ran into my arms and said, “Mommy! I told you I was going to be brave!”

And I can only pray that I face every day of motherhood as brave as she was on Saturday.  And that I remember that I AM A MOTHER.  I am HER Mother and HIS.  I am the one that they think knows all the answers.  I am the one that they will come to when they’re hurt and upset.  I am the one to speak truth in their lives and encouragement to their soul.  I will be the one to forgive and forget.  I will be the one to bend but not break.  When they have little one’s of their own and feel overwhelmed and unprepared and so not ready for this they will look at me and think, “Did she feel like this? Because I never saw it.”  Just like I look at my Mama and think that she must not have ever felt like this because to me she was always just the perfect Mom to me.

Here’s to us imperfect Mom’s whose kids think that we’re perfect.  No matter what, you’re doing a great job today.  Your kids are never going to remember the times that you snapped or the dinners that you reheated or ordered in.  They’ll just remember you being you and think that you were perfectly perfect as their Mom.