Wednesday, April 28, 2010

The REAL Mothers on Facebook

I love my kids! Who doesn’t? Everyone is crazy about their own kids. Everyone thinks their kids are the best and the brightest. My aunt once told me, “There is only one most beautiful baby in the whole wide world and every mother’s got them.” So true. But even our best, most beautiful and brightest little darlings can really get under our skin.

This is never so evident as at the end of a school break. Spring break was over nearly three weeks ago and I'm convinced I'm suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

At the start of the vacation I’m planning day trips to fun places like museums and amusement parks. It will be so much fun to see them really having a ball. Naively, I’m thinking, “Wow, how are we going to do all this fun stuff in just two weeks?” Happily, we roll along to movies, ceramics, the Bronx Zoo, etc. And that’s just Week 1!

Mid-way into Week 2, I’m just trying to keep them busy and out of my hair. The laundry is piling up. The dust bunnies are reproducing and forming colonies under the couch. I’ve run out of snacks and juice – AGAIN! They need to go back! How many more days? I begin having thoughts of just dropping them off at school anyway. Sure, I know it’s closed, but they can just wander the halls, right? It’s safe there – it’s school!

Somehow, someway, I find ten minutes alone with a much-deserved java and log onto Facebook. Ah, let’s see what the gang is up to. There they are – the bevy of phonies. Status line after status line of nauseating gush.

“Boo hoo…. Little Jake goes back to school tomorrow. I’m going to miss him”
“What will I do tomorrow when Amanda returns to school? We had so much fun together.”
“OMG! I loved having ALL 4 of them home! What will I do when they go back????”

Who are these people?!? I enjoy my kids as much as the next mom, but come on! The first part of the school break was great – but people – it’s been two weeks – TWO WEEKS! I want my house back! I want my six hours of not hearing “MOM!” screeched from two flights up. I want my formal living room free of Legos and a dining room table sans Play-Doh. Not to mention the barrage of school projects that had to be completed, which of course, were saved for the last forty-eight hours of this break.

Now, I’m sure there are some mothers out there who genuinely believe what they posted on Facebook, especially after the Prozac kicks in, but you just know most of these Facebook phony posters are barely going to put their cars in park on Monday morning. These poor kids had better learn how to ‘tuck and roll’ from a moving minivan.

“What will I do when they go back?” Is this really a question? It’s rhetorical, right? Because you know what you’re going to do. You’re going to sit in your pajamas an extra hour or so, catching up on your sale catalogs and chatting up with friends on the phone. You’re going to get a manicure to un-do the damage of the last several days of hot gluing school projects. You might even get some pleasure out of strolling through the supermarket and getting everything on your list instead of just tossing in what will hold them over. But in all likelihood, you’ll sit on Facebook and talk about how much you miss the apples of your eye, never admitting that secretly, you’re loving the silence!

Ladies, have we been put under so much pressure to be “the perfect mom” that we even feel the need to make a statement on the internet? I love my “me” time. The time I take for myself makes me better for my kids. I get to recharge my battery so I have some patience. I enjoyed the school break with my kids (at least the first half) but I really enjoyed seeing them go back.

Even June Cleaver wasn’t June Cleaver in real life.

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