Nobody's Perfect
Yesterday as I sat waiting for my doctor to come into the small room, I stopped fiddling with my phone long enough to notice a flyer on her bulletin board. Two words flew out of the paper and smacked me square in the jaw:
Nobody's Perfect.
I thought about that morning, how I'd rushed to get the kids out the door, raising my voice when I told my 5 year old to get his shoes on (for what felt like the 45th time, mind you), and scraping my knuckles on a door hinge as I moved too fast to get a box for fund raising out of my son's room and into the car.
I recalled the heaving sigh I made after muttering an expletive in the bathroom as I tried to get the bleeding on my knuckles under control.
I drove the kids to school in a wash of stress and took the fund raising box to my 10 year old's classroom. I forced a smile and exchanged pleasantries with his teacher and left to head home before my doctor's appointment.
I realized I hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before, I hadn't made myself any breakfast before getting the kids off to school, and hell, I hadn't even brewed a pot of coffee. No wonder there was a thundercloud over my head. I need to take better care of myself, I thought.
There's something to be said about eating breakfast alone after the noise of the children has stopped echoing through the house. When, as a mother, you have moments of quiet to reflect on how you have reacted to their just being kids, how the guilt can creep up under your skin and hold your lungs hostage.
Especially when you are an adult child survivor of abuse and the very last thing you ever want to do is treat your children the way you were treated. So you overcompensate, overindulge, and hope you don't screw them up too badly.
I wonder what they will remember. I wonder if they'll see me in their memories, years from now, as the silly mom, the one that has dance parties with them in the kitchen, the one that takes them places where they can discover and explore and be themselves, the one who makes up songs with their names in the tune. The one that loves them so fiercely.
I stared at those two words in the doctor's office:
Nobody's Perfect.
And I let the harsh guilt of the rushed morning go.
This is an original post to Canada Moms Blog. Web Designer Karen Bodkin also blogs at her personal blog Karen Sugarpants and Craftastrophe, "because handmade isn't always pretty."
Photo credit: Karen Bodkin
