“Your boots may be made for walking, but mine are in case I need to kick your ass”
So says the calendar on my wall, the one Aunt Jenny gave me for Christmas this past year, and every time I read it I chuckle. It hits one of those funny bones somewhere between how I used to think of myself a lot of the time and how I always hoped other people thought of me. Kinda tough, kinda witty, and at the very least bold. But anyone I’ve ever loved would tell you straight away I’m also full of a whole lotta hooey, i.e., I am, and always have been, as soft as they come.
I do still think of myself as plenty fierce and formidable, when I have time to think of myself at all. But I often feel more ragged than rugged, less put-together than thrown – in all regards. I remember once, several months ago now, when something compelled me to ask Bubba Mike what he thought about the ways motherhood had changed me. His reply started with, “Well, motherhood has certainly taken the luster off you…,” at which point I remember having two very forceful, and distinct, reactions: 1) Ouch! and 2) Really, I used to have ‘luster’?
It’s no secret that every mother grapples with the ways she has ‘let herself go.’ And if there is a mother reading this right now saying to herself, not me, or, I haven’t let myself go, or even, I don’t care about any of the ways I let myself go – then, I say, you’ve missed something extremely important about motherhood, or maybe about personhood. In any case, you missed it…None of the analogies coming to my mind sounds as sincere as I feel about this particular point, so let me try to explain with words from an artwork of Richard Stine’s instead: If you don’t go in, you can’t find out.
Back when I decided to have Django on my own, I anticipated many of the ways life would change. I knew I wouldn’t be freewheelin’ about town at night, training for any triathlons, jet-setting to faraway lands or enjoying the orderly state of my tidy household. It was easy to make a conscious decision to give those things up for awhile. What was harder was contemplating how to avoid giving up on what brought most people a child in the first place – romance. Seeing as how no romance had managed to take root and thrive in my world before Django, I certainly wasn’t confident it could or would after. The best I could do was promise myself that if romantic love was one of the things I ‘let go’ in the process of motherhood, it would need to be one of the things I picked up again. And again, and again, and again, if necessary.
It’s taken me over two years to begin honoring that vow I made, but honoring it I am now. Wish me luck.
January photos: 1) NYE Slumber Party; 2) Rainy Day Breakfast at Katz' Bagels; 3) Sky Ride at the Oakland Zoo; 4) Eating German Chocolate with Rita!; 5) Putting on an Outdoor Puppet Show at the Discovery Museum; 6) Popping a Stroller Wheelie after Zoo Class; 7) Circumnavigating the Little Farm; 8) Who Said Money Can't Buy Happiness?; 9) 3 x 2yos Readying for Bed; 10) Sleeping on the Sippy.
