December 30, 2010

I realize that no one ever said motherhood is a glamorous job. There were no illusions on my part, going in. I mean, I knew there’d be diapers and spittle and stained clothing. But I guess I thought maybe I’d be one of the lucky ones who manage to handle it all with a bit of panache. Somehow, the oatmeal in my hair would be contained to a cute, endearing smear in my bangs, just above one brow, that somehow only served to sweetly accent my eyes…that sort of thing.

I was mistaken.

Now that I’ve been a mom for a good 18 years and my oldest child is a senior in high school (don’t ask me how that happened-I haven’t a clue), I am in the weird position of having a bunch of child-rearing experience based merely on the fact that I stuck it out and survived (so far). Along with that come two other signs of slightly advancing age: memories and little bits of wisdom.

One thing I distinctly remember from my earliest days of motherhood is that I didn’t want pets in my house. I love puppies and kittens as much as the next girl, but I couldn’t stand the idea of having hairy creatures that lick themselves relentlessly lolling around on the couch where my pristinely clean little baby would later slump into the cushions. Her pacifier might touch that couch! I practically boiled my hands dozens of times a day just to keep from transferring some virulent, imagined bacteria onto anything in her immediate surroundings, so how could I expose her to the grossness of an animal?

But things changed. It wasn’t long before there were three kids, all under 5, and the oldest one wanted a kitten. Which meant that the middle one also wanted a kitten. And since the girls had gotten kittens when they wanted kittens, their little brother soon began to use his new-found verbal skills to wonder out loud why he wasn’t allowed to have a puppy.

I should have mentioned that I used to be much more of a pushover than I am now. Today, I wouldn’t even let the sentence finish whining out of his mouth.  Another thing that came with the years, apparently.

Anyway, the point is that my formerly clean house soon succumbed to the daily onslaught of seemingly endless pet hair flurries. It’s not that I didn’t try to keep up with it. I vacuumed like a maniac and lint-brushed several couches to nearly threadbare condition. But it wasn’t my only job, you know. There are a lot of things to clean when you’re a mom. Like the bathtub…

The tub, to me, represented my commitment to being a good mommy. And to trying to keep up with my own mother’s clean house standards, which made Martha Stewart’s homekeeping guide look like the itinerary for a ski trip to Vale. I scrubbed that thing daily when the kids were small, so that their precious little bottoms wouldn’t come in contact with anything icky. And I shouldn’t forget to mention my slight obsession with disinfecting the toilet seat with Lysol after every use just on the off-chance that one of the kids might (*gasp*) touch it on the WAY to the tub.

Let me just pause here for a moment to laugh at my younger self... (insert the Jeopardy theme here…)

Ok, thanks.

So you would think that when it was my turn to get a shower, of all residents of the house, I would be entitled to step into a clean tub, right? One that is free of weird specks and questionable-looking hairs? I would think so.  Absolutely, I would think so. Quite a lot, actually. In reality though, everyone else got to use the tub before me. And I do mean EVERYone.

So my first nugget of wisdom, gleaned from years of real mommy-hood, and given now with love and the very best wishes to whomever may be reading this:

Sometimes, being a mom means bathing after the dog.