Thursday, January 16, 2014

I'm Bringin' Dirty Back (yeah)


So… this being my first real foray into social media and sharing any sort of information on the Internet… I thought I’d lay myself bare. I’m putting it on the table. People will attack me in the comments and dig up ugly pictures from my past and post them like they did to that one mom who said that stuff about that kid.

Here goes.

<deep breath>

I don’t wash my back. 

Wipe the spit-take coffee from your screen as I elaborate. I don’t even own a back scrubber.  I make zero effort to contort my elbows in the shower to try to reach the recesses of my spine.  I guess I figure the soap from my shoulders and the shampoo are doing the work for me?

If you’re still with me, let me assure you I scrub my kids’ backs just as well as, say, their arms and legs, so no need to bring the authorities into this. But I truly believe that no adult is really scrubbing his or her own back. Am I living in a fool’s paradise? Has my long-suffering husband just put up with me because, well, I’ve borne two children? Are his occasional attempts to shower with me in the morning not the poorly timed advances I’ve always assumed? Does he really just want to model proper mid-back scrubbing for me?  Am I going to have my little filthy bubble of ignorance popped one day:  “Oh wait, you’re all really doing that?!”

It’s like that meeting that occurred sometime in the fall of my fourth grade year. My invitation got lost I’m sure, but suddenly being a Brownie and playing with Barbies were deemed unendurable activities. I unexpectedly found myself on edge in the cafeteria― chest tight, eyes darting around the room. I had no idea what was acceptable. “Oh wait, what are we doing now?!” I immediately torched my Brownie uniform and begged my mom for a subscription to Teen magazine. Clearly, I was behind and needed to be reading bizarre gynecologic health advice and picking out my prom dress.

When I wait in line with Monkey to drop him off at preschool I overhear other mothers discussing all of the amazing things going on in their kids’ lives. Every time I hear a new one I get that fourth-grade tightness in my chest and think, “Oh crap! We’re doing that now?!”

You know that if you don’t feed your kids chard they won’t be able to pass pre-calculus, right?  I bake Austrian chard into his homemade Cheerios.  NO!  Never Swiss.  NEVER.

Well, you just have to try those amazing bilingual art classes.  We blue-ribboned in the uchongaji division last summer.  

There’s no way you can afford to skip family shriek therapy Tuesday nights… I’m a certified instructor.

Sometimes I feel the need to turn to Monkey and, holding tightly to his little three-year-old chubby hands, choke out,  “I am so sorry. No wonder you crayoned the carpet last Thursday- I’m a miserable bore! I didn’t know every other kid in your class was doing tai chi in the park. I didn’t know we were doing that!” 

I should start focusing on his little sister’s activities. Sassafras is just fifteen months, so I can get ahead with her. I have time to get her enrolled into binary jewelry making.  She’d probably eat all the beads and hog-tie her classmates with the yarn, but at least she won’t be destined to sell plasma to purchase cheap vodka for her college dorm. I haven’t failed her yet.

How many times have you stood in a group of mothers and fretted about your figurative dirty back? Moms are powerful. For example, I read an article arguing parents need to rethink how we talked to our kids about strangers. We need to stop telling our kids to never speak to strangers. If your kid is lost or needs help, they need to remember one simple rule: find a mom with kids. That woman will help you.  She will keep you safe and get you the help you need. Isn’t that amazing? You, and I, as moms, are just understood to be powerful protectors, champions to little ones.

But moms’ actions in relation to our fellow champions? We sometimes use our power for evil. With just the hint of a sneer or a glimmer of superiority, we reduce fellow moms to a pile of hyperventilating panic. We so desperately want to be doing right by our own kids we can be tempted to prove to everyone else that their way falls short.

I have wanted to share a laugh with the other preschool moms when one mentions their nightly flashcard sessions, a moment of solidarity that not all of us are there yet… but I just stay kneeling, trying to keep Sassafras from pinching the iPhone from the purse in front of us. I am terrified that the rest of you moms are doing nightly flashcard sessions. That you all stopped playing with Barbies. That you just got the new scented back scrub from Kiehl’s and it’s divine. That no one told me, “By the way, we’re all doing this now.”

I will fail my kids somehow. I will forget or never even know I was supposed to do something major for them. But we must give ourselves a break. Be kind to the mom next to you in line. That mom who takes a picture of her son next to the same, scientifically accurate stuffed animal every week artistically tracking his growth? She didn’t get her child into toddler Farsi. She <gasp> doesn’t have Tofu Tuesday at her house. She lets him watch an extra hour of television after kiddie Karate. And that’s okay. She’s doing her thing and she’s not judging the mom who makes a scrumptious tofu taco.

Oh, and lest you judge me too harshly for my less-than-stellar hygienic practices, just remember, there’s an entire continent of people who think our lack of bidets makes us foul.  But that’s okay.  Who are they to judge?

- Elizabeth

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