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How’s this for a true tale of
Halloween horror: a couple of days ago,
I was walking to my car in the grocery store’s lot and musing about the
cute bagboy, who I swear was flirting with me. I thought to myself, “Of
course he was. I don’t look too bad for a woman who has two children.”
Holy crap. I have two children. I nearly gave out a blood-curling
shriek right there.
I don’t know how this happened. I mean, I know the biology of how it
happened, since I had both high school health and access to HBO. What
flummoxes me is the sheer fact of the two kids, that when I get home,
they’ll be there. Waiting. Staring at me like I was their mother or
something. It’s freaky.
I can’t feign ignorance with regard to the existence of my babies. I
was, after all, there for their births. I remember the pain and the
pushing and the poo as if it were yesterday. Pictures, three-plus
years’ worth that still have yet to be sorted and put in albums, prove
that they have been mine for a while now. Their stuff is scattered all
over my house. The older one keeps her teddy bears in my pantry. The
younger one has stained my couch. Physically, there is no denying the
evidence.
Still. The simple concept of “I have two children” is one that makes my
brain lock up, like an engine without oil.
I have two children. I can barely even type it without feeling all
wobbly and squicked.
I just don’t feel like someone’s mom. Mothers are my mother’s age.
Mothers wear aprons and look like June Cleaver and know how to darn
socks and dust and whiten whites. Mothers always know what’s best.
Mothers have snacks waiting after-school and arrange piano lessons and
play dates. I am not a mother. Hell, I don’t even have a piano. But the
simple fact remains: I have two children.
Perhaps its so hard to own my momness because I don’t feel that I have
really changed all that much even though there is overwhelming contrary
evidence. I don’t feel that much older, not really. Despite my
ever-increasing crop of gray hair, I still listen to the Ramones and
Elvis Costello. But I’m not stuck in a time warp, where it’s always the
early 80s. I know who the kids are digging these days. Pop culture has
not passed me by.
(continued at right)
The only hint of my increasing momitude is proven above. Everyone under
the age of 27 has become a kid to me. My college students look like
embryos and act like hooligans, what with all of the drinking and sex.
I don’t get the appeal of week-long hang-overs or Paris Hilton or
tanning salons. Some of them were born the year that I started high
school. Most can’t remember a time when there wasn’t a Bush in the
White House. That’s if they pay attention to politics at all. Which
they don’t. Because most of them weren’t old enough to vote in the last
election.
Despite that, I don’t feel old, even though I’ve passed 30, a milestone
that felt like a road block ten years ago. By now, I expected to know
how the world works, to be passed the point where I felt like I was
just faking it until I knew what I was doing. The people I looked up to
when I was in my 20s – the ones who acted as mentors and sages – were
the age I am now. How terrifying is that? I trusted these wise folks to
know everything but I can now see that they had the same base of
knowledge that I currently do. And I, even on my best days, wonder if I
should be allowed out in public, much less in charge of anything,
including the two small people who sleep at my house.
I have two children. I am a mom twice over.
When I look in the mirror, I don’t see that. When I think about myself,
I think about college and Austin and awkward teen years. The kids just
start to crawl in during the last bit of what my life has been to this
point. Which isn’t to say that I don’t find them delightful (most of
the time) nor that I want to get rid of them (again, most of the time),
just that they occupy such a small part of my institutional memory at
this point that I forget that they’re there. Yet they are how most
outsiders would define me. “Oh,” they think, “she has two kids.”
It’s
how I defined mamas before I became one. I couldn’t see how they had
rich inner lives, too, and are more than schleppers of the small set.
Yet we are so much more.
Still, I get hung up when I think about how surreal the having-two-kids
can feel. Yesterday I was swoony over Duran Duran. Today I know the
names of all four Wiggles. Tomorrow I’ll know where my local Red Hat
Society holds its monthly meetings. My heart just skipped a terrified
beat.
I have two children and can’t even remember my phone number most days.
I am in charge. I make decisions about big life issues, yet can’t
decide between brands of tomato sauce. This sends more chills up my
spine than any mere Halloween ghoulie. Pay no attention to the
ear-splitting screams.
____________________________
About the Author:
Adrienne Martini has been a theatre technician, apprentice massage therapist,
bookstore bookkeeper and pizza joint waitress. Eventually, someone started paying her for her words and an editorial mercenary was
born. She has written theatre reviews and features for the Austin
Chronicle, blurbs about tofurkey and bottled water for Cooking Light and a piece about
knitting summer camp for Interweave Knits. She is a former editor for Knoxville, Tennessee's
Metro Pulse and recently picked up an AAN award for feature writing. During the day, she fields freelance gigs and crams
knowledge into the heads of college students in Upstate New York. At all hours, she is mom to Maddy, and wife to Scott.
