At The End of The Day

There are some days that my heart breaks selfishly a bit. Days like today.

As my son gets older there really are no play dates. While kids are generally kind, there are limits to their patience. It’s hard to figure out how to play with another kid who wants to stand at the bottom of the water slide flapping rather than going down. His peers are now preteens and the adults that are close by interpreting for him, ensuring safety and cueing socially reciprocal behavior are going to inhibit their own wing stretching. So today, as I sat entering in my second hour in direct sun making sure my guy didn’t keep going past the “do not pass” safety barrier at the foot of the waterslide, I couldn’t help but notice the world around us. I had nothing else to do but try to clear my mind of things that poke at my side and wake me breathless in the middle of the night that were now tugging at the straps of my mom-suit with sunburned shoulders. I see the young women in their bikinis, laughing and hanging off of tattooed boyfriends and remembered a time where wondering if my thighs were firm enough or if my mascara was running were my biggest concerns. And at the time they really did feel like big concerns.

There are days….just like every other chubby middle aged mom…I simply miss my youth.

I watch other moms read their books and drink stealthy mojitos next to the pool as their kids run to them at rest time asking for a hot pretzel. The lifeguards are there to protect theirs while I stand knee deep in freezing water wondering what would happen if I tried to do the same.

There are days….like every other mom of little ones…. I wish I could enjoy a day off near a pool instead of making sure my child came home alive.

I see the moms with toddlers and infants on changing tables and laugh as I remember being in the same predicament with a wet, slippery cherub in a soaking wet swimmy full of poop and trying to carefully slide it down over a squirmy tushy not realizing the sides rip off for easy disposal. Today I am trying to find a dry floor free of clumpy toilet paper wads to change an preteen in a soiled swimmy and keep my fingers crossed that this won’t be the last year I can squeeze him into a size large Huggies Swimmer.

There are days….like every mom of infants…I just wish we were out of the diaper stage.

Once I shook the delirium of the midday sun and made my own mojito at home I felt less like I was crawling toward a mirage in the desert only to be disappointed by more sand. I feel conflicted by my own selfishness. I know the bottom line is if he is still oblivious to his differences and is still filled with joy doing what he likes to do whether it suits me or not then we are still golden. And yet I can feel like I have received a sucker punch to the gut when I watch pubescent girls walk quickly in cliques past him whispering and giggling. I don’t know if my child worries about the same things I do or if he has crushes on girls or if he sometimes grieves his differences. I hope not. That way I can keep my selfishness where it belongs-to myself.

But that’s the thing. Don’t ALL moms go through this?

We have a sacred ground that feels like it is being broken if we say it out loud or admit to having a bad mom day.

Special Needs bad mom days and Typical bad mom days have a different script but definitely the same plot. No. I will never worry about my kid having a psycho girlfriend. I will never worry about my child’s heartbreak of being brushed off and losing social status. I will never worry that I did not raise him with morals or respect for adults. I will never worry about whether or not weed will be his gateway drug to heroin. Those things are equally as important even though there are days I would rather worry about those things. Somehow it became not OK to admit to worry or heartbreak or disappointment for fear of being seen that we somehow don’t appreciate our children. I hesitate to share on these days that I must sit quietly for a little too long and think about things a little too much. I am weary of feeling somehow missing our old lives or having a twinge of disappointment over “what could have been” cannot possibly coexist with loving our children with all our souls or appreciating their uniqueness in all their flappy, pool water drinking ways. See, because you know what I miss too some days? My flat stomach with a belly ring that didn’t look like it was a way to deflate my abdomen. I miss not checking moles and worrying about skin cancer. I miss not having to hire a crane to hoist my chest up in a bathing suit. I miss drinking beer all afternoon in the sun and flirting. I miss working 40 hours a week and actually being bored in the evening when I couldn’t find someone to go to the coffeehouse to see some local guy playing acoustic somewhere. And I dare anyone reading this to NOT feel like they miss those things too sometimes and that they too would consider trading their situation in to go back for just one day…..and then realize there would be no way in hell. Because we will never be the same…and for that the world will never be the same and that is the backward legacy that our kids give to us. As we gave to our parents.

I often wonder what kind of mom I would be in an alternate universe and feel very selfish on lonely summer afternoons. But ultimately…..special needs or not, I really don’t think I’d feel different from any other mom remembering back to their own carefree days of playing in the pool only worrying about herself.