I Am A Bad Mom.

I am a hypocrite. There, I’ve said it. Finally got the guilt off my chest. Perhaps this is not the best time to move on considering Mother’s Day is right around the corner. But move on I must. Care to join me?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not abandoning motherhood, I’m just redefining what it means to be a good mom.

I used to think I needed to be the cool mom. The mom who had her crap together- heavily steeped in work and volunteer activities while always making time for family, friends and loved ones.

Delicious meals accompanied by clever conversation or fun and games with my family as we gathered round the dinner table. Sh*t together. Loving, caring, full of guidance and enthusiastically encouraging everyones’ dreams and ambitions. Bingo. Bango, that was me in the hypothetical flesh. OK. Maybe just me envisioning my ideal self. 

Then Covid took over our lives.

Gone was the framework that structured our days. Gone was the desire to make each endless day different and more meaningful than the one before it.

 My husband now worked from home, no more commuting to the city, no more business meetings- there was just Zoom after Zoom after countless Zoom.

 Even holidays and family get-togethers had to be “celebrated” on Zoom. We all learned how to sign in and join on. Sometimes we even dared to allow ourselves to be seen on the screen. Mostly we either awkwardly leaned too close to the cameras so our flaws were gloriously magnified; other times, we just gave up and shoved our kids in front of the camera while we lurked comfortably out of view. So much for spreading the joy.

And then there’s the old reading, writing and ‘rithmatic we’ve all had to deal with. My children begrudgingly attended school remotely…when the wifi worked…when the teachers could figure out the technology….when cyberspace stopped eating their homework and when their school issued computers weren’t staging their own mechanical coupe. 

Don’t get me started on all the school related meltdowns that ensued.

Everyone was home. Always home. NO ONE EVER LEFT.

Our Pause became a lockdown with no parole in sight.

Engaging and creative dinners devolved in to thrown together meals scarfed down in silence while eaten in the living room, in front of the tv, hypnotized by whatever nonsensical show we were binge watching on any given night.

It didn’t matter that our day time clothes were our night time clothes and our night time clothes turned into our day time clothes. For what it’s worth, I made sure everyone made their bed in the morning, even if they were going to crawl back into it after breakfast to attend school or work.

It didn’t take long before my  “Best Mom” crown started to show signs of wear and tear and eventually disintergrate right into my increasingly gray, overgrown hairstyle. 

This was not the motherhood I had envisioned. I was not the mom I wanted to be. And yet I couldn’t pull myself out of my funk. I was just languishing.

And then one night, my teenage daughter announced she no longer wanted to eat dinner in front of the tv. She who has her IPhone permanently glued to her hand didn’t want to watch tv at dinner! She bemoaned the lack of dinner time games and conversation! How could this be? Be still my foolish heart. Maternal urges started to gurgle. Had my precovid mom mojo actually had an effect on my kids?

Inspired, I grew determined to up my cooking repetoire. Back to creativity. Back to trying new ethnic cuisines, flavor profiles, spices and blends, cookbooks, recipe sites galore. It was as if I was overcaffinated on the thought of the return to normalcy. Time out. Just stop me now. I realized I needed to take my own, personal pause.

It was not my great cooking or the variety of taste sensations my daughter was missing. It was the merriment, the laughter, the break from the drudgery of her daily grind. It’s ironic that while we complain about the rigorous pace of our daily lives, when faced with a forced slow down, we abandon all sense of our priorities- our to do list for when we find the time turns into a do nothing list because we have all the time. 

Gone was the quality of our life. Our most precious gift of all was being squandered. 

And damn it. My daughter wanted that life back.

So now we are all a bit more enlightened. We’re back in the kitchen. Dinner is now eaten at the kitchen table.There is no tv, no phone in sight at meal time. 

 As the world is once again starting to open up, we must too. Now that we have experienced how life is both in and out of our control, we must all proceed the wiser. It shouldn’t take a pandemic to make us realize that the desire to create a meaningful life for ourselves, our families and our loved ones should never be abandoned or taken for granted. Turning the ordinary into the extraordinary doesn’t have to be difficult, or time consuming. It just has to be.

So as another Mother’s Day rolls around the bend, I will brush off my tarnished crown and return it to its rightful place. Slightly crooked and bent out of shape- proudly displayed on my kitchen table surrounded by love inspired recipes enjoyed while making meaningful mealtime memories.

Happy Mother’s Day to all.

We are all super heroes, super moms in our own may. Make the time to celebrate yourself. Just remember to right your crown when it starts to faulter. Please share a proud mom moment in the comments below then share this post with mom’s who could use a broad smile. Happy Mother’s Day!