No Makeup

A good friend and I recently compared notes on our newborns. Or rather, under the guise of discussing our newborns, we compared our mommy skills. That is, we compared our fears that we might suck.

Okay, no. We both figure we're, you know, decent at it. ("Decent" pronounced with that shrugging overemphasis on the first syllable, the way your mother would respond when you asked what you should wear for Thanksgiving dinner.) Our kids have emerged from our foray into parenting relatively unscathed, appearing rather smart and pretty darn cute, too. But this has led the outside world to assume we're phenomenal parents. That we know exactly what we're doing, we have made informed choices on all elements of childhood health and well-being, and we are, above all, confident.

Which is kind of a joke, especially if you've met my kids. Have you ever had a conversation with Delaney? What exactly am I supposed to do with her? That's a kid who should have come with a manual. With a super thick trouble-shooting section.

Yet with each child, and with each friendship, I come closer to fully recognizing the dirty little secret at the heart of motherhood: None of us knows what the hell we're doing. Those moms who look like they have it all together? Yeah, they don't have a clue. (In my experience, dads don't usually know what they're doing either - but they'll just come right out and say so.)

Personally, I would rather spend the day with a mother who recognizes that the decisions she makes for her family are based on little more than best guesses. She considers the research, identifies the option that she interprets as having minimum risk, and inserts a healthy dose of intuition. I dread spending time with parents who honestly believe they have it all figured out. Seriously. They're annoying. Well, that and the fact that I don't believe they exist, so I count the people who present that way as extra fake. If I have ever presented myself that way, I would like to apologize at once.

So consider this me answering the door with no makeup, in an unflattering tank top with inadequate support. With my messy, un-sexy ponytail, let me say that I question every decision I make, strongly suspect my kids would be better off with someone who is nicer, and get annoyed all too easily. I overload on what I hope is unbiased research regarding nutrition, birth options, vaccines, child development, and education, and still get no further than throwing up my hands and saying, "Well, hope we made the right call on that one. Guess we'll see."

I'm coming around to being vocal about this, finally, because the truth is we all have to wash off our makeup at the end of the day. We all take off our bras when we put on our pajamas. (You do, right? Because you really should. Breast cancer risk and lymph flow and all that.)


So no, you are not the first parent to decide that the only possible way these enigmatic, precious creatures have been entrusted to you was through some great cosmic mistake. Nor are you the first parent to post Instagrams of the local, organic, superfood-packed dinner you just made, leaving out the fact that they had McDonald's for lunch. And can we please agree to not discuss remembering to brush their teeth in the morning?

And then there's my all-time favorite gem from Hallmark. 

As if to highlight my point, the mail truck pulled into the driveway while I was writing this. The mail carrier handed me two packages from Amazon, containing most of our curriculum for the year, along with the acknowledgement from the school district that they've received our letter of intent to homeschool. I wish I could say that I gleefully snapped a picture of today's mail and posted it to Facebook with a comment like, "Take that, sub-par public education system." My reaction was more like, "Oh crap. We're really doing this."

Then I read the letter - and found a glaring grammatical error in the paragraph detailing the RSA regarding evaluations and reporting. The official letter from the school district informed me that I did not need to "turn the evaluation into the state" unless requested. Well, that's a relief, because that would be one hell of a transformation. Add one point to my homeschooling confidence.

Unfortunately, Liam just informed me that he never ate breakfast.

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