But I’m Not That Mom

But I’m not THAT mom! kept running through my head. I don’t do smocked dresses or big hair bows. I don’t sew. I barely BRUSH MY CHILDREN’S HAIR half the time for glory’s sake. How can I be a “girl mom” when I’m not even that girly?

A picture of stair-step girls all in a row with matching dresses and me, the mother, in my own version of the coordinating homemade floral pattern was all that came to mind. My vision had us standing on the steps of the church, since we’re a good Christian family and all, probably living in a well decorated home with drapes where I would lead my daughters in the essentials of home economics. I was feeling sudden pressure to be much more domesticated than was possible, at least possible for me. It wasn’t that having daughters was a new concept, I had two already, it was that I was going to have ONLY girls. Which made it official, I was, and always would be, a “girl mom.”

We were driving home from the ultrasound for our third daughter with the news of “It’s a girl!” ringing in our ears when this panic attack hit. And for some odd reason I had a surprising hurdle to overcome, surprising to me at least. It was the stereotype in my mind of what a mom of all girls looked like. My husband and I suspected this was our last baby. Our own ages creeping toward 40 and the year of trying to get pregnant this third time led us to believe this would be the last ultrasound for our permanent baby of the family. {Little did we know on that drive home that we would be welcoming our fourth daughter into the world only 2 years later, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.}

I have no idea where this prim stereotype of the girl mom stemmed from, probably that girls are known for being sweet and pretty, so their mothers must be too. My daughters were pretty, in fact the prettiest on the block in this mother’s unbiased opinion, they just were a little rough and tumble too. Their outfits consisted of items we scavenged from the mountain of clean clothes on the laundry room floor. There was nothing matchy about anything they wore. With each other or in their stand alone outfits.

And as quickly as the But I’m not THAT mom phrase and the movie-like mental footage of the nowhere-close-to-who-we-are family came to mind, these two precious words followed:

God knows.

I took a deep breath {as deep as my pregnant belly and the altitude in the Mile High City would allow} and felt myself relax as I exhaled. He knew I was a terrible housekeeper, that my kids’ clothes were notoriously stained with paint and smeared with food, that their bangs in their faces kept them from noticing the lack of home décor and that my high school sewing class almost ruined my perfect GPA. He knew I was a mess of a woman that no one would hold as the model of organization or domesticity.

He also knew I could model strength and independence and creativity and emotion to my daughters in only the ways I could. That I would love them fiercely, find their jokes funny and cry when they cried. He knew I was the best mom for them not in spite of me, but because of me.

And oh how glad I am that he knew and still knows.

Friends, have you ever had this type of panic attack? That you’d never be the right or best mom for your kids? What have you learned that he knows and how has that brought peace to your mother heart?

Alex

Alexandra Kuykendall spends her days wiping. Wiping counters, wiping bottoms and wiping tears. She is the Specialty Content Editor for MOPS International and author of The Artist’s Daughter: A Memoir. Alex lives in the shadows of downtown Denver with her husband Derek and their four daughters ages 12, 10, 5 and 3. You can connect with her at AlexandraKuykendall.com

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