Rockin’ the Yoga Pants: In Support of Frumps like Me

            The other night, I stumbled upon an episode of “What Not to Wear” where former child actor turned stay-at-home mom Tina Yothers was being made over by the hosts. They chastised her for her black yoga pants, hoodies, and sandals, and instead presented her with frilly blouses, chunky colorful jewelry, and wrap skirts. She stared with confusion at the ensembles and asked how she was supposed to assist with painting and crafts while volunteering at her daughter’s school in these expensive, fancy get-ups. The hosts, I’m assuming both non-parents, laughed off her serious question and told her that the first step of change is acknowledging discomfort.    

            I don’t normally watch this show, but I was myself in my at-home “modified” yoga pants nearing midnight on the couch, procrastinating cleaning up downstairs to join my husband, who was already fast asleep. I could sympathize with Tina’s serious look of confusion at these fancy clothes, and felt obligated to sit there and watch on, a silent alley for her under my fuzzy blanket. For, I too, was wondering the same – “what’s so wrong with yoga pants?” 

I used to have “nice” clothes when I was working – lots of pantyhose, lots of opaque tights under my black boots and short skirts, clean man-tailored shirts atop perfectly-fitting slacks. But when my maternity leave started, I literally couldn’t fit into anything other than the last two of my surviving maternity tank tops and my husband’s navy blue pajama pants with images of Homer Simpson splattered all over. I wore them every day while my legs swelled and while I waited for my son to be born. And when he was, I’m surprised my “wardrobe” consisted of anything more than shreds of tattered cloth, because that’s all that seemed reasonable during those crazed apocalyptic first weeks. After the shock of initial parenthood wore off and morphed  into a subtle acceptance of the fact that my life was never to be my own again, my wardrobe, sadly, consisted of sweatpants. Not “acceptable to the public” yoga pants, but plain old sweatpants, people. I threw my un-straightened “natural cavewoman look” hair into a low ponytail every day, and I never put on make-up or painted my nails, something that I have always loved to do. Around the time my son was 8 months old and turning into a walking toddler, I slapped myself into gear and started making it a priority to put on make-up every day. Straighten my hair. Paint my nails again. Baby steps. Then - a pair of jeans! Occasionally, a clickity-clackety heel. And eventually, I found my way into some sort of at-home casual, semi I-can-pull-off-looking-like-a-regular-person style. Yoga pants, sandals, plain tanks and cropped yoga pants in the summer – all the things What Not to Wear’s hosts were condemning Tina for, pretty much sum up my wardrobe. This stay-at-home look might be an easy target for this TV show and others to say that we are letting ourselves go, but my guess is that no one is taking time and money into consideration. Maybe I can shed some light.

just another pair of yoga pants....

Reason #1 why moms wear yoga pants: we don’t have time for anything else. It’s 30 minutes and counting until we have to leave for school on a typical morning, and my son and I head upstairs to get dressed. The idea of leaving Aidan alone to get dressed on his own while I pull together my look is a reasonable thought, but as I stand in my bedroom with my pajamas halfway off, I have to keep walking back into his room to assist. Things start off simple enough. “Mommy, can you button my pants?” “Mommy, it’s your turn to brush my teeth.” I perform the needed duties, underwear on, to-be-determined shirt still not-on, and head back into my room. Oh, I forget to brush my own teeth. “Mommy, my socks are in a ball and I can’t fix then.” Fixed. I make the beds. “Mommy, look at me!” my son smiles as he comes into my room with one sock on yet completely naked elsewhere, pajama shirt twisted around his head. “It’s Naked Man time!” Naked Man is my son’s superhero alter ego, who comes to our house at precisely the worst times ever and proves he doesn’t really have any superhero powers whatsoever. I utter the phrase “get dressed!” more times than I think humanly possible in five minutes and head back to my closet, again, half-dressed with a toothbrush in my mouth. In the closet, there are vestiges of my former self – long black skirts, button down tops with wide collars, pretty flowered springtime skirts. “Mommy, can I line up my Star Wars Fighter Pods on your dresser after I get dressed?” 

“Yes, if we have time, but why aren’t you dressed yet?!? ” I close the closet and run back into my son’s room for his jacket and backpack. Rinse the stubble out of the sink from my husband’s morning shave. “Mommy, can I play you a Disney love song with my guitar before we leave?” “Do I have time to draw a picture?” “I can’t find my Batman underwear.” I pick up my husband’s dirty t-shirt from the floor. I run downstairs as Aidan finally pulls on his pants to put the dirty breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, and head back upstairs, remembering I am still not dressed yet. I am sweating. I feel out of breath. Look at the clock. Ten minutes and counting. I am still not dressed. And I spend a good two minutes thinking about why I am sweating and out of breath just trying to get dressed. People have said that trying to get small children out of the house is like an Olympic sport. And I am finding that this doesn’t seem to change with an older, I can-pretty-much-get-dressed-on-my-own child. And I have one kid. The idea of trying to get multiple children dressed and ready and then myself is a feat so daunting I start sweating again just thinking about it. 

I open my dresser drawers. The black, worn, thinned out yoga pants are calling my name. I have them all in the bottom drawer, as if I am rationalizing to myself that they are infrequent items, deemed for the bottom, “lowest priority” corner of my stuff. But let’s face it. I frequent that drawer more often than any other. I find my most “acceptable out of the house” pair and put on my make-up. I chuckle a little at the dichotomy of my existence – how the thought of putting on a pair of jeans can be “dressing up” these days, but how I still like “putting my face on.” I think of my grandmother, who, to my knowledge, never wore a pair of pants in her entire life of 93 years. She would put on her heavy polyester skirts, pantyhose, fancy blouses, pearls, and heels just when she was sitting around the house or making scrambled eggs. My mother, an early Baby Boomer, used to spend three hours up-doing her hair in elaborate curls, a landscaper in her own right. I carry on as a homemaker myself, but the yoga pants are fancy enough for me. Luckily, times have changed. After a full day of chauffeuring Aidan, errands, vacuuming, cleaning the house, playing at the park, bike rides, wiping poop, shampooing hair, doing arts and crafts, reading, wiping more poop, cooking, and doing dishes, quite frankly, I don’t think anything other than the mighty yoga pants would survive.

Reason #2 why moms wear yoga pants: no one else really cares, especially the important people. “Throw your husband a bone!” the “What Not to Wear” hosts tease Tina. After our husbands spend their days in a starchy dress shirt and tie or a crisp uniform, shouldn’t we put a little more effort into how we look for them? Maybe that’s just a little bit of an outdated myth. My own husband, who is colorblind (really), cannot tell when I’ve had my hair cut several inches, when I have make-up on or not, or when I have dyed my graying brown hair a drastic bright shiny red. Sometimes I wonder if he would be able to tell if I got a new tattoo, magically grew three inches taller, or accidentally lost a finger. And I think most dudes are like that. I think they are just grateful for someone who can take care of their kids every day, feed them, and flop onto the couch at night to be their comrade after a long and stressful day of work. Sometimes I will apologize to my husband for the ridiculously fluffy set of jammies I sometimes wear to bed night after night in winter. He just stares at me. Guys don’t even listen to what their wives are chattering on about, so why would they pay attention to what kind of pants they are wearing?

Things haven't changed much. Rocking some cropped yoga pants. At least I'm comfortable.

Reason # 3 why moms wear yoga pants: We can’t afford the fancy stuff. There’s a reason I run into every other mom I know at Target – it fits our budget. I stand in the aisles of Kohl’s in my yoga pants holding my 30% coupon trying to figure out what the final price will be on the new pair of discounted yoga pants, and I’m OK with that. “What Not to Wear” gave Tina Yothers $5,000 for a shopping spree to de-frump herself as a mom. In the real world, that doesn’t happen. I wear underwear until the elastic is shot and socks until there are holes at the toes. My husband will ask if the five-year old sweater I’m wearing is new (again, he’s not good with the details) and my response is “yes.” And I honestly believe that that’s new. I still have items in my wardrobe that I wore on my first few dates with my husband over a decade ago. A lot of us moms wear our ratty black yoga pants because we can’t afford to replace them with expensive, nicer things. If we are the soldiers of scarcity, sacrifice, and thrift, then the yoga pant is our uniform. Instead of joking that we’ve become too complacent or lazy, or let ourselves go, maybe we can see ourselves in a new light – honoring the sacrifices we undergo, the great job we do with such a small budget, and the struggles we try to manage with how tight money can be on one income. But, I don't mean to be too martyrish though. After all, today I actually DID make it to yoga. In my new yoga pants ;)

Lost at Sea

I grew up on an island. Despite the ocean’s accessibility to me, I was never a summery beach person, preferring instead chilly winter walks along the shore when the blue and white nothingness of it all seemed only for me, as if I was the first person on earth taking up vacancy. I’ve always loved the sheer emptiness of the beach, an oblivion that always spoke to me in a way that seemed to turn off others who loved the warmth and sunbathing of island life. The colder off seasons drew me in as a little girl when I’d take Sunday walks there with my parents, the brisk air awakening my lungs. I’d play hide and seek with my older brother in the sand dunes, taking shelter in the valley, which was always filled with a softer, warmer white type of sand. If a large breeze blew by, it’d whip the grains around me, as if I was one small brown speck inside a giant hourglass. As a lonely teenager, I’d escape the dysfunction in my house by seeking refuge in my first car, which seemed to always automatically steer its way to the beach. I’d stare out at the gray-blue winter water through the windshield as if my longing to be on the other side of that ocean could will it to actually happen.

           

          And years later, after already venturing to the land across that ocean a few times, I still found myself being drawn back to its shores, this time, with a tiny newborn against my chest who was along for the ride whether he wanted to be or not. When I stood at the threshold of motherhood, I arrived there much more dumbfounded, frazzled, and jumbled than I could ever remember my tiny son appearing on his own journey into humankind. Even though Aidan was decidedly frustrated with the limits of newbornhood and all the constrictions that came along with it, he seemed to still maintain a steady and strong will, as if he knew exactly who he was and what he wanted, even at two weeks old. I, on the other hand, felt like my entire soul was an erupting wound of vulnerability and naivety, rocked with the presence of this miniature yet assured creature whom I desired for so long but had no idea what to do with. Aidan as a newborn didn’t like rattles or pacifiers or sitting in his pretty swing or bouncy seat. He’d wail if placed in a stroller and didn’t sleep in the infant carrier that I saw so many other babies sitting contently in. He’d roam his humongous black eyes around the living room, our “campsite” during the early days of feedings and diapers as if to say, “what else ‘ya got?” 

And so, we’d go out. To the duck pond. To the bay. And finally, to the ocean. I’d show Aidan the vast blankness that I cherished so much, and let him hear the cyclical crashing acoustics of the water. Back then, I couldn’t pinpoint why I felt compelled to take a tiny newborn to roam the desolate shores, other than to have a definitive place to go with an infant that seemed to want to see the entire world before he could sit upright. But I suppose I felt a deeper draw to the water, as if its blue depth was a magnet to my rawness as a mother. As if the answers to my confusion would be whispered on the wave crests. I craved its therapy, and how the timelessness of the beach brought me comfort when nothing else could. For, even when I didn’t have the answers, I knew the ocean would remain steady and still, as it always had been, despite whatever immense changes were going on in my life.

I recall one day when I was four months into motherhood, waist-deep in the trenches of sleep training and wide-eyed dawns. Aidan wouldn’t nap and I felt myself becoming more unraveled each hour that passed with his irritability. I had been trying to help him learn how to sleep well for weeks with no success. I didn’t know where to go or what to do, but I found myself strapping Aidan into his carseat and heading the five miles to the late autumn shoreline. I’ve never felt more unhinged in my life. Unhinged and crazed and lost. Completely maddened by this tiny person whom I dedicated every waking moment to. Lost amongst friends of mine who seemed to bounce right back from childbirth, motherhood, and infancy, as if they had acquired a new piece of furniture instead of a creature that required incessant grueling attention. I felt like I had been abducted by aliens the day I gave birth to Aidan, and was returned to earth forever different, possibly appearing the same on the outside but altered and changed nonetheless. The ocean didn’t help Aidan’s restlessness; neither did the rocking of the tide nor the salty cold air. He wouldn’t sleep. I drove Aidan home more maddened than before and wound up locking my keys in the car. Unable to get into the house, I took refuge in my old neighbor’s place and called my husband to make the 45 minute commute to come open the door and rescue my keys. Any hope of Aidan eating and sleeping was lost. I waited politely yet disturbed the whole time, and when my husband finally got home, he magically got Aidan into his crib to sleep, evoking my envy over his grace as a father. When he returned into the living room, I wept uncontrollably onto his collarbone. I felt like one big ocean, waves of emotion upheaving onto my husband’s dress shirt and tie. I cried primitively, like a brand new baby myself, the tears lurching out of my exhausted, red eyes like stinging waterfalls. I howled into him, losing all sense of reality and composure. The ocean had not worked. But I kept hope for its compass-like pull to me, waiting for calm. Listening for answers.

A year later when we relocated six hours away and much further from the coast, I mourned the loss of my ocean and all things nautical. I didn’t know how I was going to leave the shore. I regretted not spending enough time engaging in water activities, thinking I should have gone on more boats and spent more summer days at the beach. But we fell in love with our new location and soon I didn’t think about how much I’d miss my proximity to the beach. Still, its lure was a subtle haunt within my heart; a quiet vestige of our old life that I’d crave often. Aidan got older and turned into an unstoppable toddler, then a feisty older toddler and finally a verbose strong-willed boy. Every disrupting cycle of bad behavior or upheaval in who I thought Aidan was made me crave a drive to the ocean. We managed without it but I missed its soothing vastness. 

 

Recently, we took a family vacation to the beach. I was eager to visit a spot on the coast I had never been to before and to get away for a bit. But I was impatient to fulfill that quiet craving that had been lingering for the last few years. I couldn’t wait to stand in front of the ocean and just be. Aidan, at four, had been well behaved and chilled out for awhile. The insanity of earlier days was behind us. Still, I was antsy to get myself on that sand and feel soothed and solaced. 

But instead, although we enjoyed the beach and the vacation, the satisfaction for being coastal again was anti-climactic. I couldn’t wait to get back to the place I always felt restored, but when I got there, I didn’t feel any big relief or change. Aidan spent most of his vacation tossing around in the waves with Daddy. They’d stand knee high in the water and Aidan would squeal with delight as my husband lifted him high into the air and safely into the surf. He chased the tide and ran backwards with the water as it lapped upon the sand. I spent most of the time standing to the side, watching my two men at play, almost amazed at how effortlessly parenting has found its way to us. I thought back to my early shattered days standing at the ocean like a puzzle piece waiting for its matching pair. I thought of how far I’ve come as a mother and of how I’ve learned to create my own salve for the chaos and trauma that raising a child can bring. I smiled as I watched Aidan playing contently at the shore, thinking of how we’ve both matured these last few years - two composed daily comrades instead of crude adversaries in some sort of apocalyptic babyhood warzone. Peace had­­ found its way to our family naturally.

It is not the ocean, nor the water or shore that is therapy for me. Its presence back in my life didn’t alleviate any sense of isolation or confusion. I realize that what it always did for me was simply provide an environment free from distraction, so that I could return inward and find solace and certainty in my own maternal heart. The magic was never dancing upon the foam on the shoreline or whipping around the ocean air, but inside me all the time. Without the confusing world of parenting advice, other people, internet articles, Facebook, books, magazines, clichés, little old ladies in the drugstore that offered mothering advice – with all of that gone and just the elements of nature around me, I could look within and restore my own knowledge. The answers were already deep within. Once, I was adrift at sea. And eventually, I found my way home. 

Ghosts in the Library

                I’m not sure when it happened, but all of a sudden, my son has crossed over into the “independent reader” section of the library. He isn’t interested in the picture book area, nor the bins of educational toys in the kiddie space that used to entertain him in prior phases of his live. Aidan simply wants to select a few comic books on his own and chill out on the big kid couch. Today we had an impromptu trip to the library to return a few books and get out of Daddy’s way at home while he did some work. After getting his Summer Reading log stamped from the librarian, Aidan heads down the graphic novel aisle, pulls a few superhero and Star Wars hardcover comic books, and makes himself comfortable on the couch furthest away from the noisy children’s area. Feeling idle, I look at my little guy and dare to try something I’ve never done at the library with him before. “I’ll be right back,” I say.

            “”K,” Aidan casually replies as I trail away  to the adjoining fiction section backwards, eyeballs firmly gripped on my son’s small head. Quickly, I scan the aisles looking for a book that grabs my attention. In all these years, I have never attempted looking for books for myself at the library with Aidan. It seemed pointless to try in those beginning years when we made regular trips to our different library chains to meet friends for Storytime or to play with the toys there.

 I recall my very first trip to the library when Aidan was a brand new baby. “I can do this,” I mistakenly thought. Back then, I hadn’t yet learned that Aidan was not like every other baby I thought I knew; he would never come to be OK with being placed in a stroller, never fall asleep in public, never prefer to suck on a pacifier and be silent, never be content with just holding some chewable toy, and never ever for a second let you forget that he demanded constant don’t-you-dare-look-away-for-even-a-second attention. I stood there in my post-partum maternity summer capris, rocking Aidan in his spanking new stroller and staring down the aisles of parenting books, feeling good about my outing, as if I was still a normal person in the world of normal humans going about their business. Aidan fussed and cried. He flailed his red arms about in protest. He pushed his chest out, trying without success to bust free from the straps. I tried the pacifier, the little crinkly toys, the side-to-side rocking that my husband had already perfected. Aidan hollered and continued his stroller-revolt. Sweat started to pool on my upper lip, chest, and back. He looked up at me with angry black eyes as if to say, “what are you thinking? That you can just put me in this contraption and I’ll be cool sitting here doing nothing?” I left the library sans books, struggled a fighting Aidan out of his torturous stroller and into his even-more torturous car seat, dripping from the hazy July sun and returned home to nurse my strong-willed boy in front of the air conditioner, still shaken with naïveté, still so raw from my entrance into motherhood and selflessness.

In later months, the library became the weekly place of communion between me and other mothers finding their way out and about. We made cross-legged Storytimes and Itsy-Bitsy Spider songs and sleigh-bell shaking our important and crucial business each week. As our infants crawled around each other and drooled atop wooden blocks, we touched the surface ever so slightly on the real issues of parenthood, the stories and questions and uncertainties inside our hearts still waiting to be quenched with solace. There simply wasn’t enough time in our 45 minute baby class to share what we really wanted to share about alienation, selfish impulses, fear, and self-doubt. Instead, we joked about stretch marks and checked in on each other’s teething statuses before heading to our cars to go our separate ways for naps.

Even later, as Aidan grew into toddlerhood, the library was merely another place where I chased and chased and chased my itty bitty son as he took off constantly. It almost didn’t matter where I was those days; it was all the same blurry, sweat-inducing dash. Aisles of bookcases were like runways to his unstoppable legs and the four-walled empty meeting room where Toddler Time took place was exactly the confinement Aidan wasn’t going to go for as he jetted towards the door whilst all the other kids seemed to sit contently with their Cheerios. Then, magically, over the last couple of years, the library transformed into a sanctuary for my son’s growingly insatiable curiosity and love of reading. At two and three, Aidan became all business when it was time to head to the library. In his marine biology phase, he pleaded for me to read every single book on deep sea critters and fish. We’d squeeze in together on the smallish loveseat and devour each find. We’d spend hours engrossed in whatever Aidan’s obsession of the month was, and I’d wobble on my knees down the aisles of books, head tilted, pulling as many pieces as I could find that fit his current interests. “Ooo! Can you read this to me?” Aidan would ask, already taking his place on my lap before I would have a chance to answer.

Today though, as I experiment with leisurely stepping away and trusting my growing boy to stay in one place while I try to look for something for myself, I feel uncomfortable and awkward, as if I am in the process of relearning a basic skill after years of being out of practice. Isn’t that always the case with motherhood – despite my son’s growing independence, I am nevertheless utterly rusty at being relaxed in my own, lonely skin. I think of those that lose their memory and other functions from trauma and must relearn everything they once knew. Aren’t we as mothers always in a perpetual state of beginning again; striving to reclaim parts of ourselves that have been lost to parenthood – the phantom limbs that extend from our souls, the ones we still believe are there, but haven’t quite been able to touch since childbirth?

I feel rushed and distracted. I drift blankly down a few more aisles, this time allowing the distance between Aidan and me to grow until he is completely out of my vision. I think of the future, and of how I will be releasing Aidan from my supervision in larger increments each year and each phase of his life, until he no longer needs any at all. The notion both excites and terrifies me. It has only been a few minutes since I’ve been away from Aidan but images of him somehow getting up, leaving, or engaging in some verbal scuffle with another preschooler travel irrationally through my brain.

A few moments later, I return to Aidan’s couch empty-handed. I am pleased, but not at all surprised to see his small brown head still motionless as he sits and skims through the same comic book. I creep behind him, not wanting to interrupt him or break his casual yet intense focus. I glance at the rest of the kids in this wing of the library, all larger and lankier “big” kids with their long limbs extending over the arms of the couches as they read their chapter books quietly. And I think of how long I’ve waited for moments like this, where my son and I are together alone; two separate entities that belong together but do not need to be so constantly. I feel like I’ve gotten strange looks my entire career as a mother whenever I say I cannot wait for Aidan to get older. I retrace my words, and joke that I am missing the gene that makes a woman want to keep her baby a baby forever, but it doesn’t seem to help others’ confusion. “It goes so fast, don’t rush it,” older ladies warn me longingly. But the truth is – Aidan has never seemed comfortable in his own skin until lately, as if he was somehow born trapped by the limits of newbornhood and dying to break free from it. In those first few moments of his life and after the initial euphoric joy I felt, I also looked down on him and understood that his huge black eyes were frustrated in a way I have never seen in new babies; an old man aging in reverse. I feel like I’ve spent his entire life trying to satiate his impatience with incapability. And now, finally, I can sense Aidan’s relief. This is who he has been waiting to be.

Standing behind him as he reads, I am a voyeur to his experience as a big kid. And, I am irreversibly not needed in his life in the way I’ve always been. I feel the twinges of mindfulness flutter deep within my chest. My baby is not a baby anymore. It’s a recognition I’ve looked to with excitement, and I am at once exhilarated and overcome with sentiment. Put this image to memory. I tell myself this over and over, and my heart makes peace easily with moving on; onto the next moment in our everyday mundane life as mother and son, onto the next phase in Aidan’s growth, onto his eventual teenage years and manhood. I can feel all at once how utterly special it is to feel emotional about a child’s growing up, and yet respectfully get out of its way and remain a spectator. To stand back and witness the unfolding without letting sentiment interfere with nature.   

“Are you ready to get going, babe?” I ask Aidan.

“Yeah, in a minute,” he sighs casually. I love our nonchalant exchanges these days. I do not miss the tantrums and miscommunication of earlier years. Aidan gathers the books he wants to bring home and we make our way down the long library to the checkout counter. Along the way, I pass the ghosts of our former selves down each aisle. I see the harried, frazzled spirit of who I was as a brand new mother, alien-like and dazed. I see the strong-willed defiant ghost of Aidan running down the bookshelves. He disappears behind a row of books, and I draw my attention back to the real Aidan, who marches forward in front of me. Somewhere in the horizon ahead of him, I can make out another hazy spirit; a woman, her pace slowed and intentional. I try to follow her ghost but she drifts too far and out of my vision. Is she who I will grow into, the relaxed mother of an older child? Will I learn to be as comfortable in my own skin as my son has finally become? I will find my way to this woman. In the meantime, I follow behind Aidan. He knows the path, and I trust his lead.

The Way of the River

          Slowly at first, we lock eyes. He’s dressed in a gray T-shirt, lined with sweat around the collar; gray hair curls behind his ears. His fingers are dirty from construction work, his eyes piercingly pale blue. I notice him staring at me, his icy glaze peering past the hood of my car, past my own brown eyes - longer, deeper, further than he should be able to see. I look back as a zip down the street. At first I am befuddled at his stare but I continue on driving down the street with my son in the car seat behind me. As I pass the man, his blue eyes turn hateful and through the whizzing car surrounding me, I can hear him shouting. My heart beats with aware trepidation, then turns to shameful dishonor as I hear the words. “SLOW DOWN!” he screams at me as I pass him and continue on to the intersection. My face is hot, feeling slightly annoyed yet inexplicably in agreement with him. Suddenly, I am a little girl. I am being punished. I am in the corner, hiding from my parents, shameful for the lie I told. 

          I drive home and park the car. I want to drive all the way back to my icy blue-eyed man. “You don’t understand!” I want to call out to him. “I’m from New York and I drive only slightly aggressive and fast for a New Yorker! I have a child in the back seat and I am usually a very good driver but I often get frustrated with how slow some people drive sometimes! I abhor very fast drivers and I promise you I am not a danger to society, or anything else that you might be thinking!” 

          But the man is long gone, and I am home, rushing lunch into my son so I can fold laundry while he has some quiet time in his room so I can get dinner ready on time so I can avoid a late bedtime for little Aidan so my husband and I can talk business for our upcoming vacation so we can fall into bed at midnight and start all over again tomorrow. I ignore the road signs along the way, the ones that whisper in a gentle hush, “slow down.” “Slow down.” I overlook the voices and carry on. There is too much to do.

         The following week, we depart for a week long trip to the Adirondacks. I’ve been looking forward to it for months. Vacation Mommy turns out to be very different than Regular Mommy. I savor the crisp air and peaking autumn foliage before me. I slow my pace and spend the entire morning walking the lake shore with my baby as he hunts for pebbles and leaves. I lose track of time. I relish the salty crunch of hot French fries, the creamy goodness of ice cream in the parlor on Main Street, the buttery decadence of the lobster roll I treated myself to for lunch. I sleep solidly. I hold hands with my husband as we walk through town for dinner. I feel slightly more alive and awakened. And, I am not rushing. My attitude towards the immensely long road trip changes too. Seeing my 3-year-old passing the hours in the car by singing and talking without fret, I shed my road trip anxiety from earlier years with Aidan, when he would meltdown and throw fits from his hatred of  car seat confinement. Quite simply, he has chilled out and grown up. My husband and I shrug and toss our detailed mental itineraries to the wind. “We’ll get home when we get there,” we tell ourselves and mean it. And we do. Pleasantly.
         But the next day, the pangs of perfectionism eat away at my relaxation. There are barrels of dirty laundry to do, an empty refrigerator to fill, and neglected rooms that need tending to - a tiny cobweb here or there, an empty tissue box holder, a bill to mail, a birthday present that needs wrapping for the following day. I feel Vacation Mommy evaporate into Bitch Mommy as I ignore my husband and son for the last stay-home day of our vacation before work and school start again. I choose unpacking the luggage over craft time with Aidan, re-organizing the newly stocked fridge over relaxing on the couch with my husband during Aidan’s quiet time, harried bitch-mode tone over a more ladylike one. Later, I remove my make-up and a reflection I am not used to stares back to me. I notice delicate tissues of skin around my eyes that were once not there, and creases underneath instead of the freckly youth I’d always been bashful about. I look at my mirrored brown eyes and think of my sweaty, angry construction worker angel of the week prior and his glaring blue ones. Slow down, he tells me. Slow down. Stop.
         Where have I been rushing to all this time? I think of all the times I’ve snapped at Aidan while getting dressed for school. “Let’s GO!” I finally always bark while he struggles with a sock or pleads to take one more plastic figurine with him. I sometimes make him cry. I race him down the stairs and to the car; some sort of absurd relay with a tiny, half-pint child. I regret taking the “shortcut” road that follows the lovely Rappahannock River to school because everybody drives so slow to obey the very low speed limit. “I should have gone the other way! I should have gone the other way!” I bitch in the car as I trail behind a beat-up car inching along. I think of how the five-minutes-late-to-preschool timing will have a ripple effect on all my errands and things to do before picking Aidan up and tackling the rest of the day. Has it been a race to lunchtime? A race to when Daddy gets home? A race to Aidan’s bedtime? I can hear the voice that has developed out of my breath over the last year or so. I don’t like what I hear. I can sense the pressured pace of my stride. I don’t like what I see. I flash forward to the rest of my days as a mother and am disgusted at what lies ahead of me; an anxious frazzled woman devoid of purpose and gratitude, forever rushing around to futz over minutia and ignore the journey. I’m racing towards an end that is ambiguous and hazed, and along the way, I see a path of regret and dizzied apathy. I see a race to nowhere, and a small precious son, trailing behind.
         We chose to only have one child, in part, of course, so that we could focus on that one little person, centering all of our energy on his needs and still have time to enjoy what we were doing. And for the most part, we have done that. But somewhere in between the first chaotic war-zone days of Aidan’s existence and the newer, predictable big boy childcare period we’re in, I’ve single-handedly found a way to morph my self-identity as a mother into a mutant, unappealing form of itself. It’s so easy to equate the completed chores of motherhood into self-purpose and success. Emptied garbage, check. Clipped baby’s toenails, check. Dinner is cleaned up, check. I pureed yams into twenty containers for the freezer, check. We got some fresh air, check. As baby grew and tasks became more routine, I guess I found a way to complicate the things that made me feel successful. We got out of the house on time, went to Storytime at the bookstore, got your new vitamin prescription filled, read books, had an afternoon playdate with your new friend Dylan, made dinner in time for Daddy to come home, AND Mommy got to scrapbook your six month pictures tonight just as Daddy was drying you off from bath time, check, check, check. Every completed job of motherhood and homemaking became a way for me to feel a sense of purpose and satisfaction. I realize that maybe I have hung onto this way of everyday life far too long. As Aidan approaches four years of age and grows more independent and unique by the day, perhaps I sense the loss of identity I’ve built a life around. Perhaps I fear the journey I will inevitability need to take as I re-define exactly what makes me productive in a new and different season of parenthood. And perhaps, because of all this, I’ve been hanging onto the daily chores and rushing about to this place and that place in an effort to preserve my comfortable spot as mother-of-a-young-child.
         Whatever it is, I decide to listen to my gray-haired construction worker. I slow down. Literally, I start with slowing down my driving. I realize that the speed limit in various spots in town is actually a lot slower than I’ve thought. I obey the limits precisely and take those long, belabored pauses at stop signs one learns in Driver’s Ed. Instead of bitching about slow drivers, I become the slow driver; Aidan behind me as co-pilot. And I discover that by taking our time in the car, we still seem to arrive everywhere exactly at the same time anyway. I take it further, and experiment with what might happen if we are a little late for school or errands or a playdate. It turns out, nothing awful happens. And in fact, I feel my pulse slowing, my voice relaxing, and my mind opening up to the conversations I have with Aidan along the way.
         I challenge myself to linger as long as possible after preschool as Aidan plays in the communal playroom and forget about time frames. I talk with other mothers I’ve seen for at least the last year but never taken the time to say hello to. At home, I try to disregard agendas and my “blocks” of Aidan’s structured day - Lunchtime, Craft Time, Quiet Time, Movie Time. I realize that the formless, go-as-we-please playtime Aidan and I both used to dread when he was younger is something our souls were starving for. We put a picnic blanket under a tree in the front yard and read new library books in the warm afternoon sun of November. It bleeds into other parts of our day and I don’t seem to care. I ask Aidan what he wants to do during the long long afternoon hours and I listen to his answers with an open and interested heart. When Daddy is finally home for the night, I join in their upstairs wrestling matches and silly board game play. I let dishes crust in the sink and emails go unchecked. Our weekend calendar boxes suddenly become blank and the anxiety over how we’re going to entertain Aidan dissipates as we simply figure it out along the way. We play at the park or stop in a bookstore on a Saturday and let the rest of the day form itself around rediscovered toys and niches of the house to ignite imagination. I realize that my husband and I have created our current lives around working so hard to satiate Aidan’s unquenchable curiosity that we’ve been robbing him the opportunity to fill his own empty spaces without our detailed intervention. I’m horrified by my lack of awareness about this. But I relish Aidan’s discovery of boredom, quiet, and simplicity.
         In the light of my new mindfulness, I stumble upon other epiphanies. If I linger or delay with chores or errands, I still manage to find the time to accomplish them. I channel my troubled perfectionism into a game to see if I can “perfect” mindfulness. Can I be the best at imperfection? At going slowly? At blurring borders and time?
         Slowing down reveals a new pathway to listening. I listen. I really listen to what the silence is telling me. And in place of my rushed conscience and precision, I hear new answers that I hadn’t thought about before. Answers about me, not my role as a mother. Read. Read things you’ve never thought of reading before. Write. Write now. Write for your life. Practice yoga again. More answers come. Lay in bed with your husband in the dark, listening the night away to music like you used to do many years ago. Get lost in space and time in those dark hours. Still more. There is a place in the world for you after Aidan goes to school. After this stage of parenthood. There is more for you. Perhaps if I listen closely and be still, I will find my way to that path, as well. I feel an exhilaration about the opening I’ve allowed into my life and what gifts present themselves in that open calm.

 
         One afternoon, the sounds of Aidan acting out superhero battles in his room dissipate into silence. He’s been playing for about an hour in his room during our much needed Quiet time from each other while I sort bills out to pay. I call upstairs to him but hear no response. When I check in, I don’t see my little guy for awhile, until I notice a small flesh-colored lump on the bed. He’s taken his figurines into his bed for a fight, and in the midst of it all, must have fallen asleep. The late winter light casts itself onto his brown head of hair and drooling, opened lips. I can’t remember the last time he’s fallen asleep accidentally in the afternoon. My mind starts fantasizing about how this unnatural late day nap will interfere with his ability to fall asleep at night, and how my husband and I will have to delay our nighttime plans, discussions, and pursuits. I should wake him up, I think. Instead, I climb onto his twin-sized bed and curl behind him, putting my lips to his fuzzy scalp. I think of a friend of a friend who put her young son to bed several months ago and then died suddenly on the couch from some rare disorder that is still being investigated. I wonder if she had had a few more moments on earth, would she have wanted to rush through that last bedtime ritual with her son, or linger, smelling his innocence and caressing his youthful cheeks? Would she have remembered the chores she accomplished as each day bled into one another, or the still, idle flashes of intimacy with her son? Slow down, I hear again. Be still. Right now, there is only this tiny flesh, breathing up and down on the bed, snoring softly in my arms.

         Aidan and I break out the heavier jackets for the newfound chilly winter air. We head out and start our day. We proceed down our normal route towards school and stop at the light where we always get stuck. Here in the warmed isolation of the car, I feel secure and cozy. Unrushed. “Let’s take the way of the river,” I say to Aidan, deciding nonchalantly to take the winding road that travels along the water with a speed limit of 20. The way of the river; a winding unhurried course, where sunlight strikes the simple blue-brown water, illuminating glorious patches of earth I’ve overlooked for far too long.