Three Dark Circles: Part 1

Michael Jastremski for openphoto.net

People say nobody’s ready to be a parent until it actually happens, but really, I wasn’t ready.  I’d heard that little girls were made of sugar and spice and everything nice, and that little boys were made of snakes and snails and puppy dog’s tails, but what were mothers made of?  Their make-up seemed a bit more complicated in my mind.  From what I could tell, motherhood required a never-ending laundry list of skills I didn’t know the first thing about, like—well, doing the laundry, for starters.

Motherhood, and even adulthood, mystified me. It wasn’t because I’d lacked a good role model in my own mother growing up—she was amazing.  But because she’d been widowed with four little girls and then remarried a man who had to quit practicing dentistry due to multiple sclerosis, she didn’t have a lot of extra time to give her squirrely girls lessons on cooking, sewing, and ironing.

I carried my cluelessness into my mid-twenties as a married girl.  I never felt comfortable identifying myself as a woman—the label felt so foreign, so far out of reach for someone like me.  I was a girl—a girl who avoided conversations with actual adults about actual, adult things, because, once we got past the basic introductions and the questions started flowing, there was little hope of hiding my ignorance.  If my answers didn’t show the anxiety I experienced over my lack of experience, my face did.  It always burned red when I got nervous, betraying me.   Making it even worse was the fact that I could feel it happening, causing me to stumble over my words and sometimes even get teary-eyed, and oh—everything would just go rapidly downhill from there. 

There was nothing more uncomfortable than being fully cognizant of my shortcomings, but feeling powerless to change them.  To work around this dilemma, I masked my immaturity in ways I could control, like being a disciplined college student, "entertaining" the children at adult functions, dressing professionally when appropriate, being polite and punctual at work, and keeping a nice, clean home. 

Keeping our apartment tidy was never a challenge for me, and neither was decorating.  But I always had the sense that I was merely playing house—that I was just a little girl in an oversized apron and shoes that fit like gravy boats, clunking around in a kitchen outfitted with pots and pans, mixers, and even more things I didn’t have the slightest clue how to use.  When I thought about it, I realized I’d bought the button-covered throw pillows and the heart-shaped measuring spoons not because of their usefulness, but simply because they looked cute.  That’s all I ever felt capable of doing when it came to all things adult—solely embellishing the surface of things and going through the motions with wide, sweeping gestures.  I felt pathetic and phony, but mostly, I felt stuck.  No wonder I shuddered at the thought of starting my own family.     

What I needed to do was some interior decorating, but this time, in me.  Only problem was, I didn’t have the recipe for that.  I didn’t have any.      

To be continued...