Mia The Reader

Confession: I don’t really struggle with the dreaded dust bunny problem. I keep hearing about how they multiply and bring friends and they just won’t go away. Apparently, they are a real nuisance for some people.

I am not one of those people.

I look at my furniture and think, yeah, you’re probably under there, having a party, but I don’t really care. Dear Dust Bunnies, you are the least of my concerns.

Maybe I’m the worst housekeeper in the world, but let me be honest for a few minutes. I don’t have time to worry about sweeping out dust from where no one sees it, because I can’t walk across the kitchen floor without losing a flip flop on that sticky spot I keep meaning to mop. I think it might be spilled cereal milk from yesterday morning, but it could also be residue from the smoothie my son knocked over. Four days ago. (On an aside, residue is such a pleasant word when what you’re talking about can be anywhere from tree sap to bacon grease. It’s almost like a housekeeping euphemism).

I don’t have time to worry about sweeping up hidden dust– I’m too busy saying, “I don’t know why you don’t have any clean socks, Mr. Mia, but it’s probably because I spent a large chunk of time today scrubbing the kids’ bathroom, trying to figure out what in the world that smell is.”

Yes, the dust bunnies are probably under there, but I somehow accumulated four house plants in the space of three weeks, bringing our grand total of house plants to…four. So you see, I’m kind of busy watering house plants. Maybe that’s why my house plants always die! The dust bunnies feed on them in the middle of the night!

I’m not saying one shouldn’t dust her home. I’m just surprised at the number of people who have energy to worry about that sort of endeavor. If your only problem in your housekeeping is dust bunnies, you are one of my homekeeping heroes. I’m envious of your 95% clean home. I hope to be you one day, but not as long as I have a potty training two-year-old, a four-year-old with mad art skills, and a stomach the size of a basketball.

But if, just if, you’re talking about dust bunnies but really you’re thinking about the mold that might be growing at the bottom of your laundry pile, then let’s leave the cute lint animals under the couch and admit that we have a lot of other concerns growing way faster than fluffy imaginary pests. Such as the fact that allergy-ridden toddlers often feel free to use the couch as a snot rag. Now that is a problem.

And it’s okay to be honest about it. In fact, it would make me and probably one or 4,000 other moms out there feel a lot better about their own homekeeping struggles. May I suggest that you make May your May I Tell The Truth? month. I’ll be joining you here, in this space where you’ll often hear about books but just as often hear about the learning curve that never ends on the parenting journey. It’s going to be a blast. Honestly.

When we drive into the parking lot of our local grocery store, they swoop away in a nervous flapping of wings. Dozens of solid white seagulls, floating and landing around the asphalt like the pictures in children’s Bibles of manna in the desert. I guess that’s what they’re hoping for–manna. Or even better, a few stray french fries. They flutter around, up and down, always here in this parking lot, winter or summer. And I wonder, “why?” I don’t live near the ocean. I am a good 2-3 hours by car from the coast. I don’t know how they got here, and I feel sorry for them. I feel like rolling down my window to say, “Um, excuse me, but don’t you know you’re supposed to be on the beach? Why in the heck aren’t you at the beach?” If I were a seagull, I’d be at the beach.

Here’s the part when my husband starts to worry that I am going to give some kind of analogy about how I’m a seagull in a parking lot because we don’t live at the beach. Breathe easy, Mr. Mia, I’m not going in that direction. Not today, anyway…

Today I’m relating to those seagulls in parking lots when it comes to the mom life. Sometimes I feel kind of lost, like I’m not quite the right casting fit for this role. It’s not an overwhelming soul discontent; it’s a building up of little monotonies that make me feel like I’m losing my identity. It’s the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I ate for lunch (which I despise). It’s the sugary cereal I bought because I told my kids they could pick out one treat for being so good at the doctor’s office. I think sugary cereal is the worst possible way to start our day, but we’ll all be eating it tomorrow morning. It’s the four full albums of kids music in one day of errands. It’s the number of pictures of Strawberry Shortcake I’ve colored in the last week. Okay, I actually really like coloring. But it’s all those other things I do or eat or say that make me ask myself, “Who am I?”

And come Monday morning, when all of this crashes down as my husband heads to work and I struggle with feelings of inadequacy to fill this huge role in my children’s lives, the answer to the question of Who I Am is too often “Impostor.”

The definition of impostor is “a person who deceives others by pretending to be someone else.”

Yeah, that rings true on Mondays. Or Tuesdays. Or many other days in between. Days when a mom is just too tired to be enthusiastic about playing, even though deep down it’s really her favorite thing. Days when it seems like a huge, insurmountable chore to tidy up the living room and think of something to cook for dinner. Days when you’ve listened to your teenager’s music selection for weeks now and you have just had enough. You know, those days. On those days, I’m pretty sure my precocious daughter can see right through me as she thinks, “Hmph. You’re not fooling me.” Her eyes say it when I admit we’re out of milk again, or that we don’t have enough time to watch that video I promised her, or we didn’t get around to painting her fingernails like I said we would. And a voice in my head whispers,” She’s right. I am an impostor. I’m not really good at this whole full-time mom thing.”

Am I a little overly sensitive to a four-year-old’s unspoken (possibly, please Lord, imagined) criticism? Yes. Yes, I am. Because I know it. I know that I am not a natural at this. I feel like a seagull in a parking lot. Like I’m trying to get into this role I’m not really cut out for. If I fail so badly at this some days, it can’t really be what I’m cut out for, can it?

However. Those seagull-in-a-parking-lot days are not every day. There are days mixed in when there is a sense of rightness in my life as I butter the bread for grilled cheese sandwiches and wash and fold laundry. I can be doing the exact same things on different days and feel completely different about them. Possibly I’m an emotional basket case? Possibly. But I don’t think so. I think we all come at our days sometimes feeling like impostors, like this job, whatever it is, is too hard and too taxing and it can’t really be what we’re meant for. Compound this with the loss of a lot of things we used to base our identity on–careers, sports, friendships, charity work, and so on– and it really shouldn’t be a surprise that some days parents are sure they’re misfitted in an identity that is based so much on other people.

That feeling is an especially big deal to most mothers, and it’s hard to conquer those feelings that you’re lost in something too big, that you’re not suited for this mom-life, that you just want to feel like your contributing an intelligent thought in a conversation with other adults once in a while. Here’s what I and my fellow parents need to remember: who we are hasn’t completely changed, but it has altered in a lot of ways. I would be a pathetic mother if this gift-filled, hard, joyful journey hadn’t rounded off some rough edges and penetrated my heart. I wouldn’t be worth much to my children if I didn’t consider them worthy of a sacrifice in my likes and dislikes. I’m not saying you have to love reading “Moo, Baa, La La La!” five times in a row or that teaching 3rd grade math has to be your favorite pastime all of a sudden because it’s part of your life. Because you know that’s just dumb. But you’re not doing “worthless” things and you’re still you and you’re becoming somebody better than the “you” whom you used to be. And so am I.

The days aren’t always easy, but we are right where we are supposed to be. If God gave you these children and this infinitely precious opportunity to spend time with them, He made you for it. He knows you won’t always get it right, and He is okay with that. Can you and I be okay with that? Can we get our wings wet and still try to fly because He makes us able to do what He needs us to do? That’s my prayer for you and me and all the parents out there today who some days wake up feeling like they’re out of place in their own lives. You are “Mommy.” You are “Daddy.” You are right where you are supposed to be.