Saturday, May 7, 2016

A Mother's Day Fantasy

I can't speak for other mothers, but I know what I want for this Mother's Day.

I want not to be a mother.

This doesn't mean that I regret being a mother or that I'm unhappy.  It just means that I need a little absence from the position to make my heart grow fonder.

I want to wake up and find my house completely clean.  Not just tidy.  Not just mopped.  I want it so clean that it looks like it was never lived in.  So clean you could lick the baseboards.  So clean it doesn't even smell like my house anymore.

And I don't want to have done any of it or have had to tell anybody how to do it right.  It will just be that way, magically, when I wake up.

And there would be nobody else in the house.  No husband.  No kids.  No dogs.  No garbage truck or school bus or chirping birds to wake me up in the morning.  Just absolute silence...

...in a bed with freshly laundered high-thread-count sheets that smell amazing.  In a bedroom where there is no laundry on the floor.  All of the clothes are folded and ironed and put away in their proper drawers.  Oh, and all of the clothes fit too and none of them have stains on them.

To wake up, completely alone, naturally, in absolute clean silence.

That would be the first part of my Mother's Day Fantasy.

And then I would binge-watch Netflix for hours without being interrupted once.  While eating everything I shouldn't eat.  Twice.

Yet still my clothes magically fit because salt doesn't retain water on a Mother's Day Fantasy.  Nope.  My body is lithe like I haven't eaten a thing all day.  Because I'm going to need to look fierce tonight.

When evening falls I'm not tired.  I'm not longing to go to sleep because I never get to sleep.  No, I have tons of energy.  I'm ready to party.

I go out and nothing about my clothes or my hair or my carriage says that I'm a mother.  I turn heads not because I have baby puke on my shoulder, or because people are pitying the hot mess that I am.  No, they're looking at me because I am emanating confidence, power, femininity, strength, and fun.  They see me and think, "There's a woman who sleeps in, always does whatever the hell she wants, and obviously has no responsibilities.  I hate her.  I wish I could have her life."

I would go places where no one knows me.  I would get carded everywhere because I couldn't possibly have children or be over 21 wearing THAT outfit with THAT hair in THOSE heels.  Wouldn't mind throwing in THOSE piercings or THOSE tattoos.

I rebel, I disrespect, I objectify and am objectified.  I personify all that is antithetical to society's definition of "mother."  I am exactly the woman that you don't want as a role model for your children.

In a single day I back-pack across Europe, buy a motorcycle, crash a wedding, lose my shoes, hitch a ride with a complete stranger because I trashed the motorcycle, and have tapas in Spain for dinner.  I fill my day with a lifetime of memories that I don't choose to pursue on a daily basis because I am a mother.  I chose to be a mother and yes, that comes with sacrifices.  Sacrifices that I chose and still choose, but sacrifices nonetheless.

And then at the end of that Mother's Day Fantasy, I get to crawl into bed besides my amazing and loving husband, in sheets that smell like us, and I get to wake up the next morning to dogs barking, babies crying, a million questions from my oldest, and birds chirping in the trees of the yard that we worked our asses off to afford.  And I will smile and hug my husband and kiss my children and thank the gods that it was all just a fantasy and that I get to be a mother again.  A better mother because I took the time to honor everything else about myself that has nothing to do with motherhood.