The Non-Mommy Parts of Me

Here’s the thing: I hate dating. I’m not a dating kind of person. All of that posturing and fake smiling and hair-tossing. It just isn’t me. I’m a jeans and t-shirt mom with princess band-aids, hair ties, and hand sanitizer at the ready at all times. Need a tissue? I’ve got a whole pack for you right here. Splinter? I can fix that. Monkey-bar blister? No problem. But get dressed up and head out to sit across from some guy and impress him? Not my strong suit. That, and I haven’t been on a date in over a decade. So you might say I’m rusty. Except even back then I wasn’t a good dater. So can you really be rusty at something you never learned to do in the first place? Probably not.

Anyway, all of these things led me to one conclusion in my year of being single: I probably had another few years of being single to come. I mean, when would I even meet someone? I have my kids most of the time. And I’ve noticed that nothing spooks a handsome young guy who has just smiled at you like the two little girls traipsing along behind you calling you “mommy.”

My girls’ dad keeps them for a couple hours on days he can knock off work early, and he has them overnight on Fridays when he’s in town, but he does travel a lot for work, and that means I’m a three-bodied, six-armed, six-legged person most of the time. Which is fine. I adore my kids--probably to a borderline-unhealthy degree. I fully accept and am honored to hold the role of being their mother, solo or not. And honestly, I think I’m pretty good at it, this single motherhood gig.

I didn’t mind being single. I needed that year of solitude. My year alone gave me time to grieve the end of my marriage, to let all the negative stuff go, to get back on my own feet, to push myself harder than I ever have as a writer, and to find a balance that doesn’t just feel like surviving, but like thriving, like moving in the direction I was always meant to go, like pure, unrestrained joy with two adorable little sidekicks cheering me on in the sidelines. But, still, there was a part of me that wondered: is this going to be it, forever?

It’s not that I need a man around to fix stuff. I can fix stuff. I work out. I can lift my own heavy things. I don’t miss cooking for someone else (I don’t even like cooking) or doing someone else’s laundry or tripping over big man shoes in the hallway. But sitting on the couch at night, girls tucked into beds they refused to stay in, watching TV before prepping school lunches, checking homework, folding the endless laundry of two girls who love outfit changes the way I love sleep, I found myself thinking: meeting someone would be nice, right? Someone who saw me as more than just a mom? It seemed unlikely, though. I travel between my house, the kids’ school, and my favorite table at Starbucks where I write and ignore all of the other patrons. My quiet cocoon of an existence doesn’t really invite others in. Especially not single men.

But lo and behold, the universe has a way of listening, even when you aren’t sure you’re really asking. A year after my husband and I set up separate residences, an old acquaintance from high school, a film producer looking for new material, asked to see some of my writing, and a conversation started. After a couple months of exchanging short stories and comments on them, we met for dinner—not a date, so I didn’t dress up or get nervous—to talk shop. And sometime between dinner, the bookstore we visited, the cafe we ended up in, the business meeting started to feel like a date. I didn’t have my kids for the night, and he didn’t have his, which meant hours of uninterrupted conversation about utterly grown-up topics. I had my princess band-aids and pink hair ties and hand sanitizer right there in my purse, but I didn’t feel like a mom for a few precious hours. We didn’t know much about each other, except that we’d passed one another in school hallways twenty years earlier, but he’d read a lot of my writing, so in a way he knew more about me than most people do. The inside of me, the vulnerable parts and sharp edges and restrained anger and hard truth-seeking part that doesn’t posture or hair-flip or tolerate any fakeness whatsoever. And even with all that, he liked me.

I guess you could say we’ve been dating for two months now, except that I hate dating, so I wish I could think of a better name for it. We’re taking it slow, getting to know each other and trying to maintain the balances of our own careers, our own relationships with our kids, our own fears of getting hurt. To call this new territory minimalizes the wonderful oddness of the whole thing. It’s new territory the way an entirely new solar system would be, when someone you barely knew in your past can come back around and help the present you feel, well, more like you. The non-mom part of me is now a bigger part of me, which is strange and scary and, ultimately, good. It makes the mommy moments more special, when they aren’t the only moments I’m having all day. So maybe dating isn’t so bad.

Mommy Do It

One of my kids’ favorite expressions, and their father’s least favorite, is “Mommy do it.” They say, shout, scream this whenever he tries to do any task that I normally perform in his absence (yes, this means just about everything). From buckling them into car seats to putting pajamas on them to filling their morning cup of milk, they lob this little demand around like it is a perfectly reasonable request. It frustrates hubby and I to no end. For one thing, he’d really like to help, and he’d like a little cooperation on their end when he tries to help. For another, I don’t want to have to do everything kid-related, and when he’s available to help, I’d love to have an extra set of hands pitching in, without all the fuss about dad pitching in. So why the big battle on letting Daddy help out? This has been going on for so long that we’ve just accepted it. We’ve tried every solution to getting past the “Mommy do it” demand, from forcing them to accept his help (often resulting in ridiculous tantrums that, in the end, hardly seem worth it), to bribing them to accept his help (“no dessert for girls that don’t let daddy change their diaper!”), to just giving in and doing the kid-related stuff myself, while hubby handles the dishes, toy pick-up, and various other non-kid-related chores. I don’t have any pearls of wisdom to offer on this as-yet unresolved issue. I just wanted to complain a little. I feel better now.

The New Breed

My mother was a stay-at-home mom. The kind who married, already dreaming of the kids she'd have one day, and held a job just to fill the days until her real dream, her real career (motherhood) finally came to fruition. I'm also a stay-at-home mom, but of the new breed. The kind with degrees hanging on the wall (a bachelor's, a master's), a decade and a half of career behind me (polished, impressive resume carefully gathering dust in some drawer now), too much of a control freak to trust anyone else with the precious task of raising my children, with a full intention of returning to my career when the kids are in elementary school. I'm in a play group with ten other moms just like me. We are lawyers, teachers, graphic designers, realtors, all coping with that awkward transition from hectic working life to chaotic home life with a child.

Our first-born babies are all toddlers now, many are starting preschool, and some of us are wondering about that transition back into the working world. When is the right time? After we've had all the children we want, and the youngest is in kindergarten? Several of us are keeping our skills up by working on a freelance basis from home (squeezing in hours of work while kids nap, or relying on Uncle Pixar to occupy them for a brief stretch so we can get some work done). It seemed like a great plan: keep those skills current, have something to put on the resume during these years away from the full-time working world, and gather some references for when we return to work. Then the economy tanked, and the seamless plan went down with it.

Now I wonder if I've already waited too long. I quit my job four years ago, and my youngest will be starting preschool in the fall (as long as we can still afford it come September). My dream of finding a part-time job, in my field, once she starts school doesn't seem as simple as it once did, with all the news stories about hundreds of people turning out for a few job openings selling hot dogs at the ballpark.

Not that I've been out there beating the pavement in search of my dream part-time job. After all, I'm busy changing diapers, doing the potty training battle, trying to convince cranky children that they really do need to nap, cooking meals that never get eaten, cleaning up endless heaps of toys and spills, and doing my weight in laundry every other day. Oh, and cuddling with my sweet girls, soaking up every minute of affection they have to offer. I'm a realist, after all. I know that having two girls only a year and a half apart in age means those teen years will be rough ones. They adore me right now, and I want my fill of that to carry me through. Which is another reason I haven't been out there desperately searching for employment. How can I give this up? The mere thought of my 2-year-old starting preschool makes me weepy for when she was a one-year-old and school seemed forever away.

Spring break

We're enjoying a few days away from the mayhem at home. Well, we've brought our mayhem with us, but we're enjoying spreading it all over my mother's house for a few days instead. With my daughter on spring break from school, and hubby away for the week on business, it was going to be a long week of trying to keep us all busy and sane. Much better to come visit Mom, who actually finds it charming when the girls trash her house, and whose method of quieting the whining dog in the night is to tuck him into bed with her (at home we have banished the dog from our bedroom, so he's really getting spoiled now).