Moms in the City - Getting Beyond the Guilt

Here is the latest installment of my column, Moms in the City.  It runs monthy in the Portsmouth Herald.

Last Saturday morning when I woke up, I wasn't right. I felt like a freight train ran over me and while I was down a Mack truck backed up over me twice and then a sea gull pooped on me. I could barely get out of bed and I hobbled into the bathroom thinking that a steaming hot shower would help. I kept on repeating in my head, "I cannot be sick. It is Saturday. I have stuff to do. I have stuff to do. Cliff and I have a date. I will be better. I cannot be sick. I went to bed feeling great. I cannot be sick."

As I was drying off I whacked my wrist on the towel rack — I whacked it hard. And that is when I just started crying. It was like a bad scene out of a chick flick — wet floppy hair, sick (did I mention that I was hormonal? Or can you tell?) And to top it all off I felt the ever hovering feeling of — guilt. Yes, a heaping dose of guilt. I sat on the toilet in my bathroom, which was on my list of things to clean for the weekend and sobbed. I was mad and hurting and hormonal and disappointed. And I felt mothering guilt.

I felt guilty that I wasn't cleaning and organizing and following through on my plan for the day. I am convinced that evil elves sneak into my home while we are out or asleep and turn the place upside down, sprinkling crumbs on the floor and making piles everywhere. I felt guilty because my sweet and amazing husband had the girls the previous weekend so I could enjoy time away with my girlfriends in New York and Boston. I had tremendous guilt that he was again "on duty" and I was going to be holed up in bed for the day. I had plans for taking Sophie and Katie out for a good chunk of Saturday afternoon and giving Cliff a little time off to do whatever he wanted to do. I wanted to take care of him. That was not happening. I could barely shuffle down the hall to get some ginger ale. And Cliff was actually fetching that bubbling goodness to my parched self.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines guilt as, "A feeling of responsibility for wrong doing." Here's why guilt is the worthless, empty calorie of emotions — I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't plan on getting sick on Saturday. It is not wrong to be human and get sick. At other times when I feel mothering guilt about not signing them up for enough after-school programs or raising my voice when they are back-talking brats, I am not doing anything wrong. I am a woman, trying her best, working very hard everyday. There I was, legitimately sick, sour stomach and all, feeling guilty — as if I was doing something wrong. And that is not right.

I thought about all of this as I sat weeping in the bathroom and I hear a gentle knocking on the door, followed by, "Momma? Are you OK?" Katie peers in, her face sweet and concerned. "No honey, Momma is not OK. I hurt my wrist and I am sad and I don't feel good. I just need to cry a little and unravel my feelings."

Katie approaches me and wipes my tears and kisses me on the cheek. She then says to me the best words that can ever be said to a sick, hormonal, crying girl. "Momma, you look beautiful. Go lay down. We'll bring you ginger ale." Then Sophie comes into the bathroom and hugs me too and at this point we really look like a scene out of a chick flick, my girls hugging me and taking care of me and telling me how pretty I am. There is no point or place for guilt when I am loved by my girls.

I shuffle down the hall to bed, and they run to the kitchen to fix me ginger ale with bread and butter. Cliff gently approaches me (he's a smart man — this isn't the first time I have been sick and hormonal). I blubber a little more my feelings of guilt and frustration at not being able to do what I planned. He says to me, "Get rid of the guilt babe. It is pointless. Get better. Take care of yourself. We need you — but please, don't waste another moment, ever, feeling guilty."

I can't wave a magic wand and from now on wipe away all of those pointless guilty feelings — but I certainly will try. I do know that Cliff has some time off coming to him. And I think we really need to get a male animal in this house soon to keep Cliff company.

Moms in the City - Do you see what I see?

My Moms in the City column that ran in the Portsmouth Herarld today.  Enjoy!

The girls and I were driving home from basketball practice a few nights ago.  It was dark, illuminating the holiday lights adorning people’s houses.  “Katie, you say ‘ooooooh’ every time there is a display on your side, and I’ll say ‘ooooooo’ every time there is one on my side.  That way we know which way to look at the cool lights!”   Those girls had a rip-roaring time, oooooing and ahhhhing at all the houses.   The car vibrated with excitement and the two of them squealing – “Ooooooo!  Lookit!  Ooooooo!  More lights – those are red!  Purple!  Oh!  My!  Gosh – it’s a huge Rudolph!!  Mommy keep driving so we can see more houses that make us go, Oooooo!”

            As we finally pulled into our driveway after taking the long way home, it looked naked and empty with just the one, lonely outside light. Apparently Sophie and Katie were thinking the same as I was, because they started chirping, “Mommy, why don’t we have lights?  Can we put up lights?  Can we do it this weekend – PLEASE!!!??!”  I wasn’t running out to get a blow-up Santa, but our house needed a little Christmas cheer – and I was excited and ready to get our decorating on.

This year - for the first time - we put up outside Christmas lights.   In the past it seemed as if it would prove to be a herculean task, given all that is required to be a human being most days, let alone a human at Christmas time.  When the girls were babies, we were in such survival mode that anything extra – meaning a step above just decorating the tree - was enough to put me over the edge.  I must confess, I think there was a year when we didn’t even put up a tree. Negotiating a toddler who has the walking abilities of a drunken sailor at best plus a delicately adorned Christmas tree compounded with the thousand and one, “no touching, just looking please” that I robotically commanded everyday was too much.  It was the tree or my sanity.  Luckily my sanity eked it out that year.

Thankfully, those days of baby desperation are long past, because I have two girls who fully believe and at the very least expect a Christmas tree.  In our garage, we unearthed bags of white lights that we had left over from decorating the tent where we held our wedding reception.  We decided to wind them around the hydrangea bushes in our front yard.  At some point along the decorating process, I slipped inside to get dinner ready.  Cliff and the girls took over, testing lights, seeing which bulbs worked, plugging things in, and stepping back to admire their progress.   “Babe!”  Cliff called to me, “Do the girls and I have enough time before dinner to run to the store to get more lights?”  “Momma!”  Squealed Sophie, jumping and clapping, “We need more lights!”

There is no guarantee what holiday moments the girls are going to remember.   It is a good chance that they won’t remember the meal I cooked or maybe they won’t remember a single present they received this year.  But I do hope they remember the excitement of driving to the store with Cliff to get more lights, so we could have a house that when kids drive by they say, “Ooooooo!”  I know I will remember this one.

Moms in the City - Beyond the Real Housewives of New Jersey

[This Moms in the City column was published in the Portsmouth Herald. The archive of past columns can be found here.]

When I began this column in July of 2008, I wrote about going away for the weekend. It was the first time in ages, maybe even since the girls were born, that I had actually left for days to be with friends. I came to the realization that I needed to fuse together who I was before motherhood and the woman I was becoming after the rush of toddlerhood. I knew I was putting myself back together differently than I was before — I had realistic expectations — there was no turning back into who I used to be.

I wanted to make sure I retained the essence of myself that I felt I had lost in the early years of baby raising. I felt so much more desperate then — desperate for time, space to myself, desperate to put the pieces of myself back.

At the time I first wrote the column, my girls were barely 3 and 5 and I was still potty training Katie. Sophie was just ending preschool, Katie, was just about to start. At the start of this column I had yet to shed my post-partum baby weight. This summer, I proudly rocked a bikini for the first time in years. And the truth is — it does not feel like yesterday. It does feel like two years have gone by. Think of all the mundane heaps of laundry, dishes and trips to the grocery store in two years.

Add onto that all of the triumphs and disappointments with children, a marriage, friends, family and everything in-between. A great deal happens in two years.

The good thing is — many things remain the same. Cliff and I are still the main planets that Sophie and Katie revolve around. We haven't moved or changed jobs — these are constants that I am grateful for.

I love being able to reflect on who I was struggling to be, while I was still in the throes of full-time stay-at-home parenting. It is great perspective to realize that the struggles that seemed so monumental at the time — like potty training or negotiating a Mommy and Me group are a distant memory. Maybe those early baby years were like being in high school — intense and brief where it is difficult to grasp the idea that one day soon they will be over. I don't glorify high school or taking care of babies. I wouldn't want to go back to either time in my life.

At 8 and 6, Sophie and Katie are real live people. They are smart and funny and amazingly they have the same personalities as when they were 3 and 5. Some days when I slow down I am awestruck that I have elementary school children with after-school activities, homework, and their own path of negotiating friends. It all feels so very grown-up. I go to PTA meetings , which is something my 20-something self never imagined doing. Two years later, getting away for a night out or a weekend with friends is much easier. I am back to working outside of the house for the first time in seven years, and happily I realize that I write more now than I did when I was that 20-something who couldn't imagine herself as a mother of two. Let's see what the next two years bring.