© Celine Sparks, 2023
There are a bunch of mom memories that you want to file away in a heart-shaped box and keep forever. You know, little pudgy people in mismatched pajamas crawling up in your lap for another round of Jesus Loves Me. Sharing homemade cookies on a rainy afternoon just because. His face when he opened the Crash Bandicoot game. Those are the moments that make the Hallmark cards.
Then there are those other moments that are not so cardworthy. All the other moms are talking about brussel sprouts and tofu, carbs and antioxidants, as if they were raising a health chart, and all of mommying had been compacted into a nutritionist’s briefcase. I’m proud for them, but not nearly as proud of throwing 6 Lunchable packages and 6 Capri Suns from the fridge to the table in 1.4 seconds and calling it dinner. And do we have to bring up that cereal night occasionally rotates into the menu?
Each year at this time as the commercials remind us of moms that made it to all the field trips, all the cookie sales, and made birthday cakes of their favorite cartoon animals, I’m reminded of all the times I fell short of this. Like way short. Like the Garfield cake looked like an orange amoeba with a tumor.
And as field trips go, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that yeah, okay, I scheduled leaving for an engagement just a couple of hours early so I would miss the field trip. But to be fair, that was after learning it was a hands-on reptile experience, and you could pet a python. You couldn’t get me out of town fast enough.
So many moments flood my soul that I’m going to have to break out the embarrassing vinyl rain bonnet. I mean, I had the best of intentions for motherhood. I named my kids way ahead of really even meeting their father, and envisioned Sound of Music caliber frollicking and Carol Brady dinner table wisdom. But when life jumps off the TV screen, it changes in its very fiber and presence.
Real life looks like … Being behind in getting to the ball field for a little league game, and being sure you washed the uniform, but when you unfold it to put it on the seven-year-old, it’s not her ball shirt at all, but her dad’s VBS shirt from 1991 that he mows in. You desperately start going through the dirty clothes pile which is rivaling Mt. Everest, and just before rejoicing that you found it, you see that it is covered in chocolate syrup. And it’s white. And it’s picture day.
Not my finest mom moment because while I was trying to sink-wash the shirt and put it on her wet, one of the older gentlemen from church showed up at the door. I solidly forgot why he was even there, except to add to the sitcom plot, but for some reason, he needed something from the garage, and when I opened the door to find it, the two-year-old thought, “What a great opportunity to climb on the ladder in the garage and dump out thousands of baseball cards, organized according to the Dewey Decimal system and tucked away neatly in shoe boxes, onto the garage floor.”
The gentleman ended up cornering my husband at church, and saying, “That woman needs help.”
Well, sadly, I think I could write a dissertation on my worst mom moments, but let’s just condense it to a list:
Standing up in the bleachers, and yelling, “Go, go, go!” at the soccer game after the final whistle had been blown, to a crowd of amused onlookers.
Being bent on a beautiful creekside family photo setting, complete with antique quilt, picnic basket, and truly homemade cake with strawberries, but missing the detail about the dressy toddler NOT falling in the creek.
Agreeing to be the mom in charge of the science fair banquet, and throwing all of the collected admission money into the garbage with the napkins.
Being the carpool mom for a basketball game, but not realizing the minivan had been spray-painted by vandals during the fourth quarter, followed by driving all through town with an obscene painting on the side of the van, and cheerfully waving at all the people reacting in the other lanes.
Inviting the birthday girl down to open her presents over “birthday water.” (Please don’t turn me in. Life happens between caregiving for grandparents and packing for Bible camp.)
Banging on the drugstore door because the poster is due in homeroom, and the child forgot to mention this until 8:45.
Finally getting the baby down in his own bed after half a night of trying. Smiling because he was so adorable, and because it briefly felt like a true Hallmark mom moment, just before the sneeze heard round the world, followed by the infant cry heard round the galaxy.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the Pinterest-perfect mothers in matching mother-daughter dresses. And Happy Mother’s Day to the rest of us who, like my mom, somehow showed up to church with her apron still on.
We all love in permanent ink, but the bulk of us just spill it on the couch in the process.
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