The Adventures of Super Mom: on Taking a Break

At some point in every Batman flick, our sexy and plastic clad hero returns home. He sulks, shuffles or drags his behind and usually his dilapidated bat mobile into the Bat Cave , he’s down but not out. He needs to recoup, rest and rejuvenate, ready to take on whatever bizarre and twisted villain may lie ahead. It’s usually in that time the pivotal part of our movie occurs, where the message, the moral has become clear and with the clarity comes victory. It’s something like being a mom, in fact not just a mom but Super Mom".

You remember her right? She can leap over a mountain of laundry in one single bound, she has organic cereal in the cupboard and sparkling clean children all the time. She also hasn’t had time to face that mountain of laundry in 3 days because she’s been too busy running from school to home, to drop Kid 1 to basketball, Kid 2 to ballet and drags Kid 3 to the post office to collect the mail that has piled up over the past 2 weeks. This is only after the postmaster called and threatened to call a recycle truck to pick it up if she didn’t get her butt down there and do it soon. After that’s done, which takes 15 minutes, 2 body builders and 6 cloth tote bags, she hops back into the minivan, who’s bat mobile disguise has faded due to lack of washing and heads back to pick up Kid 1 at ballet and finds herself confused as to why her son isn’t there and everyone is in pink, then realizes that Kid 1 is still at the basketball practice.

When all kids have been collected and accounted for, Super Mom heads home. She hauls Kids 1 through 3 out, and upstairs to the tub. She considers using a washcloth, a sing song voice and a game to wash her children. Instead she grabs the removable shower head and hoses them off, a little squirt of soap here and there, done! She quickly grabs 3 pairs of pj’s and after 3 attempts to get the right ones on the right kids, she gives up and tells them to figure it out.

She then speed reads a story, kisses them goodnight and turns out the lights. As she walks down the hall, her hand pressed to her temple it all begins to fall off. First the cape flutters dramatically to the ground, then the seam that’s been awfully stretch lately blows in the rear end of her tights and her meticulously coiffed hair, tumbles to her shoulders revealing a mountain of roots that have yet to be dyed, and split ends that she’s actually considering keeping to give her volume. Our heroine is tired, lost and broken. She loves her life and her family but she’s desperate, she NEEDS a break!

Let me let you in on a little secret, the kids are only clean because those Mr. Clean Magic erasers really do work on anything and the organic cereal boxes? Those have been filled with Fruit Loops, she’s just keeping up appearances, her kids would rather the sugar high over the fiber any day. And truth be told, she struggles some days to actually remember the kids’ names, it’s become easier to refer to them by their numbers, because those numbers coincide with the information on the calendar and that’s easier to organize. She’s actually thinking of getting t-shirts made with their numbers on them for Christmas.

It seems sometimes as Moms feel we need to do and be everything for everyone, to keep all the balls in the air, and do it with grace. And while we’ve talked about how it’s okay to not “Do it all” before, there’s a bigger issue to face. We need a break. Not the kind of break that means leaving your husband and children behind forever, not the kind of break that means seriously re-thinking your life path, but the kind of break that leaves you refreshed.

What we need, is to be recycled.

The hard part about needing that break is that as Super Moms (don’t kid yourself, if you have children, you manage to care for, provide for, and love, who are happy, You are a Super Mom) we feel it’s a chip in our armor to ask for help.

In fact the asking for, needing or even dreaming of said break is our Kryptonite. It falls under the same category that not doing it all, did. We feel inferior; we feel like frauds, we feel as though we are letting someone down. At least that’s how I feel. I have a hard working husband who’s tired after a long day, and the last thing I want to do is to ask him to help me too when he gets home. Even though I’ve had a tough day, and didn’t sleep much last night because the baby thought it would be sweet to practice being a teenager and decided to party at 3am, I still feel a pang of guilt at the idea of asking for some time alone.

What if someone thinks I’m not doing this right? What if I let someone down? What if my husband is too tired, falls asleep, my 3 year old gets into the makeup and manages to turn her 1 year old sister into a better version of Dennis Rodman? What if? What if? WHAT IF?!

You know what? What if you took an hour? What if that hour consisted of tea and a book, alone? What if that hour was a walk in the fresh air at a speed faster than a snail crawls? What if you went to shop for pants and didn’t need the handicap change room to accommodate your stroller, your children, their crap and yourself? What if you, put yourself on the charger to reboot? The answer? You’d be refreshed. You’d have a chance to digest your days, your moments, your frustrations and your fears. You might, hash it out with a friend, or think quietly to yourself. You might smile a little more, because you’ve had time to think things through. You might look 5 years younger because the roots are now gone, thanks to a fabulous dye job and scalp massage. You might just find the world keeps spinning even when you don’t.

I think as busy, working Moms (and I mean working in the living life with kids sense, not the business office way. Either way if you have children, you’re working. All. The. Time) we get so wound up in our schedules and our lives, that our days become something of a cyclone, constantly spinning around us. And after awhile that spinning starts to feel as though it’s the earth’s momentum and we are the only ones holding all together.

But what the real truth is, life goes on even if the laundry doesn’t get done. Life goes on if instead of doing dishes right after supper you play with your kids and then go take a bath, with the bathroom door shut! Your husband, you know that guy who managed to have his life together enough when you met him that you decided to give him a chance and marry him, can actually hold it all together for an hour or two. Even if he doesn’t quite do it the way you would, and Kid #1 – who’s name is actually Thomas, may wind up with grease behind his right ear, but it’s all okay, because they’re safe and that detachable shower head is good for more than one thing.

You’ll come home, come out of the bathroom, return to the situation, better than you were before. You might smile instead of scowl when your daughter breaks out into “The Song that never ends”, because you haven’t heard it in the last hour. Your attitude has taken the adjustment you’re trying to get your teenager’s attitude to do and you actually like being a mom, a Super Mom.

But what will take the cake, be the super power recharge that you need is what happens in those first few moments, after you’ve arrived. Kid #1, 2 and 3 will come pealing around the corner, and in amidst shouts of “Mommy! Mommy! You’re home!” and “I missed you Mommy”, and “How was your break dear?” you’ll feel it. That moment when the Kryponite has been removed and Superman’s wounds have healed, you’ll feel loved like no other, needed like a cold drink on a hot day and your littlest one will say, “I love you Mommy, I’m glad you’re home!” And that my Super Mommy friends is why, taking a break, looking out for “me” sometimes is worth the what ifs and phony organic cereal, it’s worth the chaos and the craziness to not only find you but to find what you love about them too!

Ashley Stone is a SAHM, WAHM and a blogger on the side. She has 2 beautiful little girls who fill her life with love, joy and exhaustion