The Margarita's Always Greener...

I can't deny from time to time that I miss my pre-mom life. And yes, even as the words are formed in my head  and transferred to the screen, I remember the countless hours I spent face down, sobbing on my bed, devastated by another negative pregnancy test... But, as thoroughly as I wished for my children, there are moments on any given day when a person sitting quietly in a cafe with a book, or an FB status about someone's travels to places I can just barely afford to read about, gives me a deep pang of longing for more than 5 minutes of solitude.

At the end of the summer I drove my mother and my two children five hours up into the Maine woods. I had the first of such pangs during the drive north when a woman who looked about my age passed me in a light yellow Thunder Bird with the top down. There was no car seat in the back and I suspected that the seats were free of juice and stale Goldfish and no one had ever left a crusty layer of boogers on the door. I also imagined that she could choose what was on the radio and how loud it was playing...
I smirked to myself remembering the National Lampoon's Vacation scenes on the highway and I realized I was having a Clark Griswold moment, as I couldn't take my eyes off the woman and the Thunder Bird. I didn't want to fuck her though, I just wanted to BE her...
She got off at the Salisbury beach exit and I imagined there was a beach chair and a bag full of books in the trunk, with a bottle of wine and a hotel room key on the seat next to her. By the time I was wondering if her husband was meeting her there later or was waiting in the room with chocolate covered strawberries, I was practically up the ass of a mini van with a Baby On Board sign dangling in the rear window.
OK... so I'm not sliding out of my convertible into the arms of my husband bound for a weekend of books and sexcapades at the beach... but I'm also not driving a mini van (ACK!!) with a squalling infant in the back. I counted my blessings and my mood lightened just a tad. I would love to tell you the pangs of longing for the other life dissipated in a matter of hours but it was the beginning to 3 days in the Maine woods with my mother, my kids, no electricity and a potty-training toddler with a combined total of 12 hours on the road. On the way home, I thought, if I saw that bitch right now, I'd key the T-Bird and dump the contents of the potty chair into the backseat.

The other more recent instance of Nobody's Mommy Envy happened this weekend after 24 hours of  almost constant rain that was accompanied by a soundtrack of:

THUMP, BUMP, THWACK, SCREECH, CRY, SCREAMING mommydragonlady, sniffle, sulk. Repeat...

On days like this, the soundtrack is on constant rotation unless I give in and decide to ignore the hours of television creating that slack-jaw, zombie-fied peace and quiet that makes your sense of Mom-worth plummet. Fortunately I was able to drown out the nagging horror of nine hours of television with two cocktails and five hours of "Girl Time" with one of the most fabulous women I know, on Saturday night. Raise your glasses and toast to "putting it all out there, " poppets! Now say a silent prayer of "thanks and blessings" for The Dad who, while irritated by my lack communication through those 5 hours, knows I deserve them.

The setting of "Girl Time" was a  restaurant/bar I had frequented some 15 years earlier during the "Thou Shalt Barely Remember" phase of my life. My sense memory brought things back so clearly and almost instantly - the clink of glassware, noisy atmosphere stuffed with bodies and the delightful smell of beer and grilled food. I thought, "Oh... I have missed this." You know, leaning over to your girlfriend to drunkenly yell something like, "My underwear is so far up my ass right now!" just as the music dies a bit and the 87 people within hearing distance are now fully apprised of your wardrobe malfunction. FUN, right? OK, so not so much stuff like that, but who are we kidding? One more shot of Cuervo and the moment is gone forever except in the memories of the 87 strangers snickering all around you...

What I was momentarily missing were the pre-mommy days when wiping up the vomit was not MANDATORY, but completely at your discretion (especially if it wasn't YOUR apartment.) The days when sippy cups were for not sloshing your cheap wine all over the dorm as you staggered from floor to floor "studying." I momentarily missed the days of taking 3 hours to get ready for Saturday night, all for your bangs and make up to be completely effed up as many hours later from dancing until your feet were going to fall off...

 

Two minutes later, my margarita was in my hand and all frothy at the top. It tasted like 21 felt in my 35 year-old memory: sweet, tangy and devoid of responsibility to anyone other than myself. The night wore on and my girlfriend and I talked and talked and I never once looked at a clock until 11:30.

Before we left, I was in the bathroom while a group of younger women were re-applying make-up and examining their reflections for a hair that may have escaped the flat iron, or checking the appearance of their asses in their skinny jeans. I smiled to myself thinking about getting ready at my house earlier in the evening. I had almost climbed the walls by 5:30. Just before dinner there was a spill, an injury, and a meltdown over twisted underwear (not mine, though it is fair to say that by the time I got into the shower, my panties were most certainy in a bunch.) I snuck into the bathroom and got into the shower but had forgotten to lock the door. Before I even had my hair lathered up, the sliding door opened to reveal a naked Viking telling me he was going to come in too. Defeated, but still focussed on the prize of the evening - my 7:30 departure time, I stepped aside and let him in.
We spent the next 20 minutes washing up and then fillng the tub with warm water and talking about our favorite super heros. The Viking delighted in filling his cup and dumping the water on my back and hair as I sat with him in the tub, my arms wrapped around my knees which were drawn up to my chin (where they previsously didn't reach because 40 pounds of chub was in the way). I was delighted that we BOTH fit in the tub, and there would be no need for axel grease to free me from the porcelain. After that, he sat on the sink and handed me items that fascinated him from my minimal make-up arsenal, "Mom, what IS this?"  "Do you like to have this one next?"  "I is be so good at helping." 

Someday, all too soon I'm going to be longing for these days... the ones right now, with sticky finger-prints on my cell phone, thumping, wrestling, giggling boys and the weight of a small body relaxing into me as I slide into bed (at 1:30 a.m), completely happy I've come home to a house where I am Mom, Queen of Everything, Finder of Lost Crap, Fixer of Twisted Underwear and Reader of Books with Pictures and Goofy Sound Effects.