When Christina over at A Mommy Story blogged about challenges she faces as a mom, Aviva and I offered help. More bloggers stepped up and offered to blog about their experiences too. Below we have Her Bad Mother's blog entry which discusses being a "CompetiMommy."
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Mommy
So, here’s a little secret about me:
I’m a CompetiMommy.
That’s right. You heard me. CompetiMommy.
Before you recoil in horror, let me explain myself. I’m not a CompetiMommy of the my-child-is-better-than-yours variety. I don’t view myself as a competitor in the Tour de Mommy or the Momolympics or anything of the sort. I’m not comparing my child to yours. I’m not competing against you.
I’m competing against me.
Instead of recoiling in horror, we are going to reach out to you and say we are glad you admitted to it. Seriously, being able to take an objective look at ourselves, and particularly the way we think we function as a parent, isn’t an easy thing to do, in fact it is one of the most difficult. So everyone say it together “Admission is the first step towards recovery!”
This probably sounds like a lot of bullshit hair-splitting: if I view myself as competitive in the arena of motherhood, I must be competing against other moms, no? Well… no. I’m not interested in comparing strollers or diaper bags or how many months we breastfed our respective children. I don’t care how our children compare on growth charts or development charts or any chart that can be found through BabyCenter. I don’t care if your child walks or talks or masters algebra before mine. I really don’t.
Good, because I (Devra) still can't do algebra and walking? Well my husband read the line about "increase of clumsiness during pregnancy" in What to Expect When You Are Expecting and shared, "Have you been pregnant your entire life? I can't imagine what an increase would be like for you." I try to stay away from spiral staircases as well as high heels. They are a major ingredients my recipe for personal injury.
What I do care about: whether I measure up to my own benchmarks of success as a mother. Whether I can compete with the ideal mother that I always imagined that I would be: the devoted, imaginative, stimulating, hand-pureeing-organic-veggies-for-dinner-while-wearing-sample-sale-Jimmy-Choos-and-reciting-Suess-in-Latin-before-putting-baby-to-bed-and-dashing-out-for-martinis-with-hubby kind of mother. The kind of mother who balances being a wonderful mother with being a good spouse and an interesting woman in her own right. The kind of mother who takes advantage of every opportunity to enrich the lives of her children and her life with her partner and - and, and - the life that is her own. I care about whether I can hold my own against that kind of do-it-all-have-it-all mother.
Oh my, you are making us blush! We had no idea what an active fantasy life you have! But in all seriousness, take a minute to really consider those benchmarks and how realistic they would be for YOUR life. See, if we all lived in a vacuum and no one else had to interact with us or our family members, we could have whatever the hell benchmark we wanted and probably reach it anytime we tried.
The kind of mother who only exists in my imagination.
Evict her! Throw her out on her Jimmy-Choo –and-reciting-Seuss-in-Latin-before-putting-baby-to-bed-and dashing-out-for-martinis-with-hubby ass!
Then quickly replace her by imagining yourself as you relax, sit down, maybe grab a beer (or make yourself a martini. Why not? This is your head, you can do whatever you want inside of it!) Imagine what you look like going thru you day with Wonderbaby paying particular attention to what makes you smile, what makes her smile. The smiles? Those are real.
Because, yes, I do recognize that this is a fictive mother, a mother who does not exist. A mother who, even if she did exist, wouldn’t necessarily be the best kind of mother. But she is still the mother that informed my maternal ambitions (once I realized that I had such ambitions) and the mother that now looms in the background of my evaluations of myself as a mother.
And, oh, how she looms.
But can she make you a mulit-colored pot holder? If not, let her go. She is of no use to you.
Against this accomplished, attentive, well-groomed mother, I reveal myself, to myself, to be sorely lacking. I can barely keep our house clean. There are Fisher-Price toys littered across our living room floor. I do not take WonderBaby to lessons of any kind; I have not taught her to swim or Salsa-Baby or sign. The organic food that she eats usually comes from a jar. The last time I wore heels was at BlogHer and a) they were closed-toe to hide my desperately pedicure-deficient feet, and b) had to be ditched after an hour because my post-partum body has lost the ability to hold itself upright in anything other than Converse sneakers.
Devra was at Blogher, she says you looked fab in your Converse sneakers and Wonderbaby didn’t even call you once to ask when you were coming back home to clean the house. It isn’t “lacking” to forgo a spotless house, it’s realistic for you. In our book we discuss how we need not keep our home “Ready for Royalty”, that “Surface Clean” is a great goal and obtainable for most parents. If you aren’t growing bacteria, then you’re probably doing much better than you think!(I do recite Suess in Latin, but only to myself, late at night, to overcome insomnia. Cattus Petasatus. A classic.)
So now we know who we are calling when we have insomnia!
I know that I am a good mother. I know that loving WonderBaby and playing with WonderBaby and exulting in life with Wonderbaby is being the best kind of mother that I can be. I know that motherhood is not about the laundry and the shoes and the appearance of things. And I know that I do not want to be one of those mothers who overfunctions and overanalyzes and turns herself and her children into a perfect little robo-family.
But still… I thought that I’d be better at this. I thought that I could be a good mother AND a good partner AND keep a tidy house AND look good AND make time for other interests AND not get overwhelmed. I thought that I would finish each day with a long bath and a cuddle with my husband and a martini and that I would bask in the glow of my maternal accomplishment.
From all we have seen of your posts, it appears that you are a good mother and a good partner and a good person. Your issue seems to be in the final AND... "not get overwhelmed". You may want to take a few moments(this may be a productive use of insomnia) and make a list of all you do in a day, week, month, hour, minute. Once you see all that you do, you may have more of a grip on could be overwhelming you. Are there things on the list that someone else can do, can be done differently, or that can be altogether ditched? Hmm, whadda ya think? Can you make some adjustments? Ask for some help?
I thought that I would get more laundry done.
How often does your family have to go out naked in public? Chances are you are doing just enough laundry. The minimum IS a standard and in a lot of cases the minimum is all you need to do.
I thought that I would be able to do it all. But I can’t. And sometimes I find that fact overwhelming. There’s not enough time, there are not enough hours in the day, there are not enough eyes and arms and hands to stay on top of all of the things that I want to stay on top of.
Ya know, we got rid of sweat shops for kids,and passed child labor laws, but our society has infused those 80 hour weeks into the world of adults. No one has that kind of time. We all struggle and our best is our best and it really is good enough. Even if we try to convince ourselves otherwise.
And so I get frustrated, running this race against myself. Frustrated when I have to stop in the middle of this road, alone, to catch my breath. Frustrated at the cramps in my legs, at the aching in my chest, at my body's inability to go as fast and as gracefully as I thought I could go. Frustrated that I can't let go of this silly mom-o-meter that I measure myself with.
Listen to your body, Catherine. You don’t have to quit the race entirely, just pace yourself, knowing winning isn’t the goal of the race, merely finishing is. Maybe it’s an endurance race and not a timed one. How about only taking on the things you can run with and leaving the other stuff in your wake, starting with that deceptive mom-o-meter, drop it and run free!Frustrated that I can't let go and just run freely. Just enjoy the wind in my hair as I go forward as a mother.
Frustrated that I'm finding it hard to just be.
When you find it "hard to just be," then it is time to really search for sources of enjoyment. Hug Wonderbaby long and hard, engage in adult conversation with the people you love, and focus on those things which make you feel grounded. The rest can and will wait - the laundry will not get impatient, the world will continue to spin even if you jump of the hamster wheel and take some time to focus on “just being”.
Trying to be the best that I can be. For her.
Absolutely, do that, but also include yourself, because years from now, Wonderbaby will be Wonderteen and if you don’t do some of this for yourself, she will be the one telling you to “Chill the eff out“. (this will happen before or after you take her to the mall, but it will happen!)
Let us say farewell to the Loneliness of the Long- Distance Mommy, and welcome the mommy who is making important strides of her own for herself and the ones she loves. No longer the “Competi-Mommy” we present you with “Emanci-Mommy”, the mommy who is free to do her own thing and feel confident in her choices.
