Places, Everyone!

One of the girls' favorite books is Tacky the Penguin, a story about an oddball penguin living among perfectly poised, well mannered mates named Goodly, Lovely, Angel, Neatly and Perfect. Tacky is loud and goofy. He sings terrible songs, shouts when he should talk, and wears a garish Hawaiian shirt at all times. He doesn't seem bothered that the other penguins avoid him or think him strange. He is who he is.

http://jeanporter.cmswiki.wikispaces.net/TACKY+THE+PENGUIN

My type A personality admires Tacky, but doesn't have the guts to be him.  When Early Intervention first started coming to our house, I would swoop through the house trying to clean it up so they wouldn't think I was one of those moms--you know, the kind who has three kids and can't manage to brush her teeth or get dressed before noon, much less keep her house clean for the new guests. I had images of calls to DCF after our visits: "Yes, she seems sane enough, but her house is beyond help.  Pots and pans, dust, toys, basket upon basket of laundry..."

I have a tendency to expend a lot of (useless) energy on achieving perfection, or some semblance of it.  When I was young, it amounted to academics and appearance.  I thought I was so over that. But it turns out old habits die heard. Now it's all about the mom image.

I just finished reading a new book called Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein (highly recommended if you're raising daughters). Orenstein traces media influences on our daughters from birth to adolescence, evaluating and analyzing the effects of our culture on girls' sense of self and well being. She makes the argument in her section on social media that teenage girls are besot with performance anxiety from an early age, not because more and more find themselves on a real, physical stage, but because the advent of social media like Facebook and Twitter have become a stage where girls find themselves performing to ever widening audiences 24/7.  Studies show that girls increasingly experience their own lives through the eyes of others.  They're formulating their sense of self based on their perception of how others see them.  Yikes!

I would argue that we mamas have a bit of that performance anxiety too.  Mamas the world over have taken the blogosphere by storm.  We facebook, twitter, and text, sending small bytes of our lives to all of our "closest" friends.  And goodness knows we aren't sending out the unplugged version of us.  It tends to be highly edited, precisely chosen material that will cast us and our children in the warmest light possible.  Take the pictures from Mother's Day that I posted on Facebook. If you looked at those, you'd think we'd had the loveliest day together as a family.  The last four hours were great, but the rest was about as trying as a day can be.  None of that showed up in our images, however. How about church? We arrive each Sunday, girls dressed in matching dresses, K sporting his own preppy look, and we get plenty of comments.  "Your girls always look so cute." or "You have such a lovely family." or "Is K always so happy?" Type A me smiles and blushes and pretends like it's all such a cinch raising three (strong-willed) kids five and under.  Type B me thinks that one of these days I'm going to video a typical Sunday morning at our house so I can start being real with people. 

What kind of mama do I want to be? With the right products and a few simple clicks, I can be Earth Mama, or Crafty Mama, or Trendy Mama, or Sporty Mama.  Jennifer Grant writes in her book Momumental:

In a culture when we are quick to judge and label others--much as we despise being judged ourselves--we parents experience a lot of anxiety about raising kids.  Sadly, we add to it by judging other mothers who are fumbling along just like we are. Worse, mothers these days are expected to do so much. While our counterparts in generations past felt that parenting was primarily about keeping children healthy (that is, alive and breathing) so the young ones could, I don't know, be strong enough to help bring in the harvest, milk the cows, and chop firewood, we now feel responsible for everything from helping our children excel at cartwheels and chemistry to preventing them from experiencing disappointment, regret, or failure of any kind.  We also feel pressure--regardless of their academic aptitude--to push our children toward wowing their teachers with their smarts.  Exposing them to Mandarin Chinese from toddlerhood is also a good idea given the global economy they will someday shape.  Additionally, they should be self-possessed, able to laugh at their foibles, physically fit and attractive, and--if you're a person of faith--they should have vital spiritual lives.

Got all that?

We take a deep breath and do our best... (30)

Grant goes on to urge parents to judge each other less, most of all, to go easy on ourselves.  After all, if you're a parent and I'm a parent, then we're all in this together.  The truth may be that many of us moms are just a tiny bit anxious that being a mom--just a mom--isn't enough.  We can't just be ourselves, we have to look the part, too. June Cleaver style. But in the twenty-first century.  Drop pearls and heels; add IPhone and SUV, toned bod and trendy kids.

But being justamom to the littles we've been entrusted is more than enough. It's marvelous. It's a gift.

If forced to pick a label, I choose justamom.

If I could cease arranging the stage just so, then I might learn to embrace the messy, chaotic, exhausting, but full of promise lifestyle that is parenting young children, or as Grant defines it: "Challenge, perspiration, and promise" (38). I might learn to say yes more often to extra stories, and silly antics, and star gazing, and downhill rolling, and grass stains, and one more game of Candy Land.  I might learn to say yes to myself, too. Yes to bad hair days and slightly dated clothing, and spots on my shirt, and dirt in my nails. Yes to a disorderly house with gunk on the floor and unidentifiable sticky goo on the walls.  Yes to enjoying life. No to posing. No to a culture that tells us we are never enough.  Just living in my own skin, close to my littles, drinking in life.

I'll take three measures of that, please. And I'll try to remember that we're already right where we need to be. In the thick of it, yes. But covered in love. Covered in grace.

***

At the end of Tacky the Penguin, Tacky saves his friends with his unconventionality, scaring away some hunters who are looking for perfect penguins to put on exhibit in a zoo.  Their motivation? Money.  When the hunters meet Tacky, they ask, "Isn't this the land of the pretty penguins?" After a few minutes with Tacky, they turn and run in the other direction.

It turns out being comfortable in your own feathers is far more rewarding than looking the part.

Goodly, Lovely, Angel, Neatly, and Perfect have their place--on the cover of the magazines I try not to read anymore.  Tacky, on the other hand, "may be an odd bird, but he's a very good bird to have around."