Chronicles of Chaos

February 12, 2008 | Print

Just a Mom

Saturday night Michael and I have a sitter. Even though we’re tired, we decide to get out of the house and have dinner in town.

As I’m getting ready with Oliver (who’s taking everything out of my bathroom drawers, tossing band aids, hair brushes, and Q tips on the floor then smearing lotion on his pile of artifacts), I bend over to turn the hair dryer on the back of my hair. For some regrettable reason, I look at my bare stomach–specifically the sagging wrinkled skin that appears to be hanging from my stomach.

I promise myself that I will never bend in that position again, especially not while wearing a swimsuit.

I move to the closet and find nothing to wear. I try on a few things until I’m too tired to keep changing clothes. We don’t have a mirror, so I ask Michael, does this look okay? He responds, we’re going to town, it doesn’t matter.

Ah, I see.

We eat at our regular, functional Italian restaurant. From our table near the front, I have a good view of the door. I notice a shortish man talking to the hostess. He’s got thick dark gray hair and wears a plaid shirt and jeans.

I realize he’s a famous director. The last time I saw him was at the Oscars (on TV). I noticed him particularly because a woman I know from school (as in we’re peers) was his date, and I later learned girlfriend.

I look again at the famous director and sure enough there she is standing next to him. She’s well dressed, not over dressed, she looks great.

I happen to know from reading several Vogue features about her and catching the rare network news shows where she explains complicated issues to fascinated anchors that she has an extremely successful career and a terrific sense of style. Unmarried and no kids.

Knowing these fascinating tidbits and seeing her in close proximity, I immediately duck under the table.

Michael says I’m being ridiculous. If it were him, he’d go over and say hello–at which point I confess that I don’t really know her at all.

The combination of my fresh off the depression pan saggy belly and bad outfit is no match for her success and glamour. If she asks what I’m doing I’d flash her my mom card, which I sense (I could be wrong) may appear as a boring minivan rather than the layers of effort, meaning and joy that go into the role. It’s hard to explain the fullness of parenting unless you’ve seen it close up, in motion.

So I decide not to cast myself as just a mom (even if it likely would have been me casting me). I don’t want to trade lives, it’s more about sharing some of that same achiever background and appreciating the various avenues we may choose as women.

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