Am I Keeping Up? Am I Good Enough?

I was my parents’ first child, born in 1981.

My mom didn’t have her eyebrows tinted for our first hospital photos together.

In the photos of my birth, my mom is wearing the provided hospital gown and I am wearing the provided hospital blanket.

This was pre-Etsy, pre-mama/daughter-matching-floral mama-kimono, baby-turban days.

I’m pretty sure my dad didn’t buy her a push present because I don’t think those existed at the time. (I also know my mom, and I know she would have said something like, “Let’s get a new washer instead of getting me a push present” whereas, I’m like, “Let’s get me a necklace and wash our clothes out back in the water which collects under our porch.”)

Multi-hundred dollar leather diaper bags which also hold laptops hadn’t hit the scene yet.

Their wedding rings weren’t strategically placed on my tiny toes for show, I didn’t have a onesie with a perfectly-placed Cricut-cut phrase which read, “I’m New Here,” and they didn’t pay a grand for a Snoo to mimic womb sounds and feels when I slept.

It all just seems so much simpler.

They had a baby and they were able to capture only 24 pictures of her per roll of film.

They “posted” the photos in those vintage albums with the stinky glue on back and plastic sheet on top.

And, they only “shared” them with relatives.

Their co-workers, distant acquaintances, and friends from high school didn’t have the ability to see professionally edited photos or family selfies from the birth.

Keeping Up

One of my friends posted on Facebook the other day that she was going to take the leap and organize her son’s playroom.

I instantly panicked.

“Shit,” I thought to myself.

“I haven’t professionally organized our ‘playroom” (living room) yet. I need to do that too, now. Bins. I need bins. I’ve got to get more bins.”

There’s something about those wall organizers with the embroidered chevron containers which set an unrealistic expectation for me.

Like, if I were a really good mom who cared, my kids would have a playroom which was perfectly organized and resembled a kindergarten classroom.

If I were like the other moms, I would have special non-BPA containers for puppets, musical instruments, and MagnaTiles and Maeve and Maverick would hit developmental milestones effortlessly because of my IKEA Trofast system.

On the contrary, Maeve and I played with kinetic sand in the entryway of our house the other day because we have limited open space. Mark laughed at the fact that I’m every Type A’s worst enemy and asked me why I’d bring out sand at 7 p.m. on a Sunday night?

“Because I need something to entertain her so she doesn’t eat my soul alive before bedtime,” I replied.

Come to find out, kinetic sand makes wooden floors extraordinarily slippery.

We’ve all been falling on our asses when we go upstairs because of it.

Precisely why my mom would never have brought out kinetic sand on wooden floors.

Organized playrooms, organic food, swimming lessons, baby sign language, farm animals at birthday parties, personalized lunch boxes?

We’re driving ourselves crazy trying to keep up.

Sensory Bins

I constantly compare myself to the mothers I see on social media and unconsciously expect that I should do everything they’re doing.

A case in point?

Sensory bins.

Sweet, sweet Jesus.

I feel like sensory bins are our generation’s apology to our kids that they can’t play outside unsupervised because we’re terrified they’ll be kidnapped.

So, as a peace offering, we make these giant Rubbermaid bins full of rice and beans that our mothers never would have made because they wouldn’t have wasted rice and beans and we spend Saturdays dying rice rainbow colors and we say to our children, “Look at Mama, Babe! Weeee! You scoop the rice!”

We hand our toddlers measuring cups and spatulas and and we tell ourselves that sensory bins encourage their fine motor skills and that we’re worthy and deserving because we put so much effort into their play.

My mom used to clean the basement where our toys were housed by using a push broom to pile all the shit on the floor up.

“The floor better be clean when I come back down here, or I’m getting rid of all of it,” she’d warn us. And then she’d go upstairs and place a call to her sister on the landline and the two of them would chat and cackle before their husbands arrived home for the day.

And she didn’t feel guilty. I know this because she has told me this for the entirety of my adult life.

To this day, she’ll stand by every parenting move she ever made.

Am I Good Enough?

There is positively no way my parents were worrying about keeping up and whether or not they were going to ruin us.

We ate that nacho cheese from a can and frequented the Hostess factory outlet on Groesbeck for lunchbox fillers.

No one was spending weeknights filling Bento boxes with sunflower seeds and black beans.

We were served bread and butter at every dinner as a side.

Country Pride white bread, that is.

And no one was spreading avocado or chia seeds on it.

Every damn time I make Maeve a meal, I’m wondering how I can make the plate more colorful, how I can position the chickpeas so they seem more appealing to her.

Last summer, she ate handfuls of sand while we were at the beach.

And, for crying out loud, my dad smoked in the family minivan while we were all in it. I once asked to roll down the window and he replied, “It’s too cold outside. You’ll be fine.”

I’m certainly not endorsing smoking in vans amongst the young, but my point is that he loved us and he did the best he could.

And that was enough.

Because he’s been gone for 17 years and I know, undoubtedly, that he loved me so hard it hurt his heart.

If You’re Thinking About It, You’re Doing It Right

In my mom’s group circle this Thursday night, we took turns reassuring each other that we’re good enough.

That we’re really good, actually.

It’s easy for us to see it in each other.

It’s not as easy to reassure ourselves.

I look at my friend, Lyndsey, and I tell myself that her kids are luckier than mine because she can breast feed and I can’t, because she works part time and I work full time, because she knows which eyeliner to use and I have to ask her.

Meanwhile, she shared that she’s worrying about whether or not she’s doing a good enough job teaching her two year old and seven month old the importance of a healthy lifestyle.

She is an amazing mother.

And yet, she questions, like I do.

We laughed at Thursday’s session when we acknowledged the ridiculousness of some of our worries.

We howled, thinking of Lyndsey, running around her house in a tracksuit while lifting weights after working all day, so her babies know she prioritizes health.

Of course she prioritizes health.

Of course she loves her babies.

Of course she’s a good mother.

Our group leader, who I’m really digging, looked at all of us after we’d discussed daycare woes, self-doubt, and relevant Daniel Tiger songs and said, “I promise all of you. If you’re even thinking about it, you’re doing it right.”

Let me say that again.

“If you’re even thinking about it, you’re doing it right.”