It’s Not a Movie, I am Mom

Ever have one of those morn­ings where you wake up and sud­denly remem­ber you’re a Mom?  Like some­how you for­got while sleep­ing that a house full of kids and laun­dry wait­ing to be put away awaited you?  Today was that kind of day for me.

I was hav­ing a dream about being off trav­el­ing. It was a jet-set dream with din­ners out, shop­ping, & I was wear­ing high heels.  Then I felt some­one shake me.  I tried to ignore it but it wouldn’t stop, it was get­ting annoying.  My heels were fad­ing away so I peeked out of one eye & asked “What?  Who’s there?”

It was Hubby.  “I’ve got to go to work and take out the trash before I leave.  He’s hun­gry.”  I stared at him for a minute, groggy & won­der­ing why I wasn’t in Paris any­more.   I felt a look of con­fu­sion creep­ing across my face, my eyes squint­ing at him try­ing to see his face.

“Who’s hun­gry?”  I asked.   “Um, the baby.  The baby’s hungry.” He looked amused at my con­fu­sion.  “The baby’s hun­gry.”  I repeated as if to con­firm there was a baby.   Hubby smiled.  “Yes, the baby.  I’ll get him up and bring him over to you.  The other kids have break­fast so you don’t have to worry about that when you get up. I also will take the trash out.”

Other kids?  For a sec­ond I felt like Goldie Hawn in that movie “Over­board” You know the high-quality film where Goldie gets amne­sia after hit­ting her head & Kurt Rus­sell essen­tially kid­naps her, makes her think she’s his wife, and has her care for his 4 wild boys.  He does it because he’s upset with her treat­ment of him.  She is rich,  bitchy, & won’t pay him for the work he did on her yacht.   In the end, she falls madly in love with him & totally for­gives the creepi­ness of his lying about the whole being his wife, mother of his chil­dren thing, & his kid­nap­ping her.  It’s the stuff that long-lasting love is really made of.

Well this morn­ing I thought maybe it was like that.  Like I was Goldie and it was all a ploy.  I was still sup­posed to be in my heels walk­ing down a Paris street with shop­ping bags in hand.  In my fan­tasy dreams I shop, alone.  It’s my ulti­mate shop­ping fan­tasy no one peek­ing under doors, ask­ing if I’m done yet, or throw­ing them­selves down over hav­ing to go into one. more. store.  It’s just me, every­thing fits, & I can afford what­ever I try on.

Then it hits, other kids.  I am fully awake & it hits me.  My other kids. I have other kids, who I can hear down­stairs fight­ing over what show they are going to watch for morn­ing cartoons.  And I have to feed the baby.  I’m his food, my breasts are like the local 7/11 to him.  Open 24 hours a day, ready to serve.  Of course how could I forget?

“Oh, yah the other kids.  I’ll be down when I’m done.  Bring  D-man here, I’ll feed him & change him.”   I kissed Hubby & thanked him for tak­ing out the trash.

I was back to real­ity.  All before 8 am I fed D-man, changed him, got up, unloaded & reloaded the dish­washer, switched the laun­dry into the dryer from last night, picked up sev­eral toys that already made their way out, got more food for the other kids, broke up 3 “It’ mine! He’s look­ing at me!  No, I want it!”  scuf­fles & finally got myself a cup of coffee.

Although I still secretly won­der if Hubby isn’t pulling one over on me & this isn’t all ploy.

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Tagged as: family, Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, mom, motherhood, movie, Overboard, parenting