Bad Mom: Ditching Dignity

I should have realized I’d seen the last of my dignity when I lifted my head off the birthing bed more than twenty-one years ago to spy a dozen handsome young interns staring at my nether regions with varying degrees of horror on their faces.

 Not exactly the reaction a woman might hope for.

But I wasn’t just a woman anymore. I was a mom. My standards have never been the same since.

One of the things that makes us good moms is the fact that, when it comes to our children, we dispatch our dignity with careless abandon.

Be honest. What other creature willingly uses a bulbous object to suck the snot out of the noses of its young? Who else walks into business meetings with spit-up on their shoulders? Does any other breed of animal catch vomit in their hands in order to spare the new couch?

Only moms dare go out in public in their nightgowns in order to get the children to school on time. We wear cheesy Christmas sweatshirts, for crying out loud, simply because the kiddos love them. We don fanny packs at amusement parks in case someone might need a tissue or more sunscreen or a band-aid.

We chase two-year-olds up and down grocery store aisles. Admit to the Christian bookstore owner that our little saint pinched a plastic baby Jesus from the shelves. Endure the glares and judgments of strangers when our child throws a temper-tantrum in the bank.

We decorate our homes with edibles: strings of popcorn, dried beans glued to construction paper, miniature houses made from gingerbread’s inferior cousin, the graham cracker.

We actually like graham crackers. Especially when shaped like animals. We eat meals put together by seven-year-olds—concoctions of bagels topped with leftover mashed potatoes all dripping with Ramen noodle soup. We lunch on peanut butter and jelly crusts, dried remnants of macaroni and cheese, backwashed juice.

Our forever-altered figures still end up at public pools in swimsuits. We become overly attached to sweatpants, and pair sneakers with all manner of dress. We drape strings of Fruit Loops around our necks and go on about how pretty they are.

We scream like banshees when our newly licensed driver comes home late, but we pretend not to overhear the same teenager tell their friends we’re lame. We hold our tongues when our eighteen-year-olds assure us that we can go to them if we have questions about anything, because they’re adults now and they’ve got answers.

We keep silent when childless couples tell us how to raise our kids. We cry in the teacher conference. We argue with unfair coaches and umpires.

And somehow we suspect that this loss of dignity has been worth it. That in the process we’ve loved more deeply, laughed longer and harder, and lived richer lives for it.

I guess it’s true after all: love is not proud.

And I have the ugly, but practical, shoes to prove it.

Caron Guillo is trying to figure out how to get the children’s food stains out of the back seat. Or if she should even bother. Visit Caron’s A WORK IN PROGRESS blog at http://caronguilloswriting.blogspot.com.