#IMomSoHard Page 4

  To say I was close to her and my grandfather Pappy would be an understatement. I drove to their house every morning in high school to drop my dog, Eric, at their house. Eric was old, and I was worried about him during the day. I’d drop him inside and have the most delicious fried eggs with Pappy every morning. We’d talk about the news, what was going on in school, or who was the latest victim of the violent Amazon crested parrot he bought at a discount store. If you’ve never seen a poodle and a Siberian husky run from a waddling parrot, you’ve never met Jose. Oh, and they also had a monkey named Tammy. Is it weird that two of my closest friends were my grandparents? Maybe, but if you had met Mimi and Pappy, you would want to be best friends with them too.

  Until I was about eight, Mimi and Pappy lived in this tiny, terrible town in Oklahoma called Muskogee. My grandparents purchased an enormous house there, with maid’s buzzers, dressing rooms, and chandeliers in the bathrooms, for about $20,000. There’s never been a better house for visiting your grandparents—or sustaining lasting physical injuries. My brother cut his hand on the rusty swing set and still has a scar to this day. At age one, I fell, while in my walker, all the way down the basement steps, and I’m terrible at home organization to this day. Their giant three-level house was filled with sixty years of stuff they had collected and thrifted. The property was home to pipe organs, old cars, a four-foot fist shaped out of wire, laundry chutes, dumbwaiters, and I think lots of ghosts. For my brother and me, my grandparents’ home provided endless entertainment, and a specific fear of a deceased dog groomer named Kenneth, who was rumored to haunt the place.

  Last, but not least, I had parents. Duh. This one is tough for me right now because my dad passed away this past year, and I’m really missing him. It feels like a piece of my heart is in the next room, and I can’t open the door to get it back.

  My parents met during a tornado, in the tornado shelter of a trailer park, which pretty much set the tone for the fifteen years of their marriage. I was eight when my parents’ marriage came apart at the seams. This happened to be the time in my life when I was just starting to love getting a laugh. Make of that what you may. My mom got a funky haircut and started dressing very Miami Vice, and my dad went middle-age crazy. They ended up getting divorced just before I became a teenager, which, no matter how hard everyone tried to make it easy, was crappy. I didn’t really care if they were happy in their relationship. I just wanted us all to go out for pizza and get goodnight kisses from both of them. We felt the financial strain of their split, the exhaustion and sadness they both experienced, and on some level I got it, but when I was a kid, all I wanted to worry about was blue mascara and if Kirk Cameron would ever love me. Now that I’m an adult and I see how hard adulting is, my heart breaks a little for both of them. I know it’s not what they planned for themselves or us.

  As much as divorce sucks, I will say, if you ever want to see a woman go into full-on beast mode, give her two kids to raise by herself and tell her she can’t do it. Postdivorce, my mom, who had only graduated high school and had not had a job outside the home in twenty years, put herself through medical school, became a physician’s assistant, and could leap tall buildings in a single bound. Don’t mess with a single mom. I thought she was Wonder Woman. She would fall asleep studying at the table. If I could take her mind off how hard things were, even for a second, I felt like a million bucks, so I’d try to make her laugh. Frankly, she probably wasn’t in the mood for my act most of the time. But I was like, Well, all right, I may not be perfect, but I can make some good jokes.

  Now, when I need to motivate myself, I think of my mom. She mommed very hard. Sometimes when I’m really tired, I’ll think, Hey self, you didn’t work full-time, go to school full-time, and raise two angry prepubescents full-time today, so maybe you could fold that laundry. And it works.

  I think all the difficulties my mom faced getting her education later in life explains why she was so focused on my brother and me getting good grades and going to college. Both of my parents have master’s degrees, and again, my brother is a show-off. Me? I graduated from college with a four-year degree in five and a half years.

  As much as I felt loved, I don’t think it would have surprised anyone if I didn’t amount to much. That just wasn’t always the expectation at that time in Bellevue. Not only was it not uncommon not to graduate from high school, I was at no point an exceptional student. Every teacher from elementary school on said the same thing to my parents at conferences: “She’s a delight and she tries hard, but she cannot stop talking.” (This is also what my husband might say about our romantic life.) One day, my fourth grade teacher took me out into the hallway and with a big grin told me, “Congratulations! You’ve tested as gifted and are eligible for some advanced studies!” It is possible the tests might not have been accurate. I did not know what her words meant. My husband teases me, “Oh, I’m sure you were in special classes, but I’m not sure if they were because you were gifted.” When I see my old report cards, I think he maaaaay be on to something.

  I did have some friends I wasn’t related to. I met one of my first besties in seventh grade. Her name was Mandy, named after the Barry Manilow song. How great is that? To this day, she might know me better than anyone. We spent so much time together, hanging during the day and then sleeping over at each other’s house. We would lie on her waterbed talking about boys, writing the names of the ones we loved on her waterbed mattress (yes, the part that can pop if you write on it with a pen—or so I hear), learning the words to our favorite Chicago and Air Supply songs. (Listen, we weren’t friends because we were on the cutting edge of musical trends.) We were both short and skinny with snaggleteeth and a love of laughing. We can still make each other laugh like maniacs.

  Like Kristin, I loved high school. Nobody was home at my house, so I did all the clubs—volunteering, speech, theater. I felt at home at school. I got there at 7:00 a.m. for dance practice and stayed until 10:00 p.m. for theater practice. And I still found time to get into trouble. I can sign my mother’s name better than she can, so I would occasionally leave during the day. (Sorry, Mom.) There are a hundred reasons why skipping school is bad, and I did it for all of them. (Sorry, me.) Sure, there were shitty things about high school, largely my bad choices, but I loved it. I didn’t hang with the cool kids, but I knew them. I got voted “Friendliest” and “Worst Driver.” The driving thing was accurate. The “friendly” part must be because I’ve always been aware that everyone is dealing with something, with themselves or their family, and making other people smile always made me feel better about my things. My family taught me to do that. I tried to be nice at least, and funny at best. I’d like to say that’s why I got multiple perms, but I think those may have just been bad choices. I can get into the sad stuff real quick, but I prefer to laugh about it all. When one bad thing happens, sure, I’m irritated and swearing. Two bad things and I’m raising my eyebrows and waiting for that third, comic beat to complete my story—that final “Are you kidding me?” to get me to laugh about the ludicrousness of it all. And by “all” I mean “life,” that beautiful, beautiful bitch. I may not be Wonder Woman, but I make moms laugh for a living these days, and that feels good.

  I Body After Baby So Hard

  Every woman has something about her body she would like to change. Jen’s got a saber tooth. Kristin has bird-of-prey feet. You’ve got a little something, but you learn to live with it . . . and then you have a baby and your insecurity gets magnified a thousand-fold because you have this brand-new body you didn’t order. You spend your teen years and your twenties dealing with what God gave you. Then you gotta spend the rest of your life dealing with what a pregnancy gave you. Once you’ve had a baby in your belly, weird excess skin will be the least of your problems. Your mental state is never the same. Your whole outside is never the same. Quite frankly, your actual hole is never the same either.

  The battle is real. Women just tear themselves apart. Always have. Cavewomen were probably in their caves thinking, If I could just get someone to eat this part of my stomach . . . We can understand that desire to just go into a plastic surgeon and say, “Take it all away.” Sometimes, when we get together, we talk about all the plastic surgery we’re going to get, like the thing where they do lipo on your stomach and your thighs and your butt and then put it in your boobs (that’s what upcycling is, right?). We’ve got about twenty pounds between us that we’d love to leave in the rearview mirror—but not so much that we would stop eating pasta.

  We did a video on swimsuits, and getting our post-baby bodies into them. We thought this was an issue specific to us, but after it received 100 million views, we realized that women of all ages, shapes, and sizes struggle with body image. Even the most beautiful women don’t like themselves at times. How shitty is that? The upside is that knowing that even hourglass types feel a bit down about their bodies sometimes can make us compassionate toward other women and, more important, ourselves. Bottom line: we’d love a revenge body, but we’ll take a “fuck it” attitude.

  JEN

  There is no justice in the world. You’d think that after bringing a whole new person onto the planet, you’d be rewarded with glowing skin and an amazing figure. But no. Things break down, starting at the bottom. Nothing works down there. I’m mangled. My vagina is like a basset hound with its head out the window, just flapping in the wind. I pee constantly. I pee when I sneeze. I pee when I jump. I pee just before I sit on the toilet. And now I’ve started doing this thing where I think I’m done peeing on the toilet and I put my pants back on and go, “Oh, I’m actually still peeing.” I’m like a guinea pig. When they get excited or you scare them, they squeal and pee. I should just have pee pads on my seat in the car and on my sofa.

  If I’m standin
g at a party, having drinks, I won’t even know I have to pee, but then I’ll laugh—“Ha!”—and I start to pee. Ha, ha, ha. So I’ll do this Riverdance thing, and I think that’s going to hold it in, but it doesn’t, so I just casually dance off to the bathroom, shuffling and stomping my legs.

  Someone told me you are supposed to stand with your legs crossed to make yourself look smaller. I do that, but not because I think I’ll look thin. (It’s not like anybody is going to say, “Oh, until she uncrossed her legs I really thought she was super skinny, but then she took a step and . . .”) I do it because I have to pee all the time, and also I’m scared an important part is going to fall out.

  I used to feel like my legs were my only good part, and now they’re so weird. I remember looking at my mom’s legs and thinking, Oh good, I got my dad’s legs. And then, ten years ago, I woke up one day and I was wearing my mom’s exact legs. I used to have defined calves and thighs, even if I never worked out. Now I feel like my legs look like kebabs from one of those Brazilian barbecue places, just soft rectangles stuck together.

  Growing up, I had so many friends who hated their legs. Even though I was short, I never wanted long legs. I never wanted to have to be responsible for that much equipment. That’s a lot to shave and, in my case, apply self-tanner to. Which I do not advise doing after you have had wine. I looked like Tigger throughout my late twenties.

  I’m glad I don’t have cankles, but I do have spider veins. I got those when I was, like, eight. (I’ve always been precocious.) And my feet are so big that I look like a capital “L.”

  I have these strange dark spots on my knees. Have you gotten those? I had no idea what they were for the longest time. I thought it might have been from getting frisky in the bedroom, but then I realized that passing out at 9:30 every night without touching your husband does not bruise your knees. It was mommy knees. You get them from crawling around all the time and having no time to moisturize. I also have mommy feet, which means I’m standing in uncomfortable shoes all day and have no time for pedicures. And I have mommy ass, which means I eat a lot of leftover chicken nuggets and don’t have time for the gym.

  I used to plan my wardrobe around my legs, which I would only cover if I had cut myself shaving, but now, after having kids, I’m covering myself up in ways that I never did before. My husband tells me, “Well, that’s because you weren’t a chubby kid. Chubby kids just get used to wearing cover-ups at the pool and that kind of thing.”

  He’s right. I did ballet and dance, which kept me thin. I mean, in high school, I used to eat two lunches every day. I know. I think I’m an asshole now too. Then, when I stopped dancing and started having kids, I just gained weight. Suddenly, I’ve got the body of a five-foot, ten-inch woman crammed into five feet. If I eat what a third grader eats, I’ll gain a pound a day. German heritage is bullshit.

  Here’s where I’m at: I could have a better body, but I’m fine with how it is right now. I never thought that I was going to be in any magazines. (Well, it’s not ballgame on House Beautiful. I’m working a real strong Hollywood Regency vibe into my living room right now.)

  I don’t want you to think I’m some crazy actualized superwoman who is made up of impenetrable confidence. It’s more like I just don’t care. It’s almost like I’ve given up. My husband has seen it all anyway. He’s literally the only person I care about whether he finds me attractive or not, and he does. Look, I’m not going to look great in a swimsuit anyway, so I’m not going to knock myself out trying to consume nothing but kale smoothies. Oh, I know I don’t look like J-Lo in a bikini. I look like J-Slow, because I’m not going to run and spill my beer.

  The weight that I am now is the weight that my body wants to be. I could do almost anything and it wouldn’t change that much. Like, I could tone up more, but I don’t know how much weight I’d lose unless I dieted like a crazy person, and it’s just not worth it to me. I am always going to look like I like cheese, because I like cheese, you guys.

  Lately, because of all the great stuff that’s been happening in our lives, we go in these meetings, and we have this running joke right before we walk in, saying to each other, “Is this where they tell us that we have to lose weight? Is this the one where they tell us, ‘We just need you guys to firm up a little bit. You’re a little too real, you know?’” But it hasn’t happened yet, and thank God, because I don’t know how much happier I would be if I reached my theoretical goal weight again anyway. Or even if I had the most perfect body. It’s never been the thing that I led with. I’m not convinced that way lies happiness. I’d way rather have someone tell me my son said please than my butt looks great in my jeans.

  “Way rather” might be kind of strong, but you know what I mean.

  I’m not saying bust a gut and eat whatever you want if it makes you happy. I don’t want anyone to eat in lieu of real actual happiness the way I sometimes fill the void with buying stuff online, but hey, if you make like a really mean Danish and you’ve been to the doctor and she says you’re healthy, go ahead and be a little bigger. Who cares?

  This is going to sound like when someone says, “I don’t even see race, man. I’m, like, color-blind,” but I honestly don’t even notice what other people look like that much. I’m oblivious. Over the course of my life, I’ve seen maybe five people and thought, Oh, that’s unfortunate. Kristin notices everything, like an FBI agent—mostly the bad stuff about herself and the good stuff other people are working with—and her brain just works a lot faster than mine does. She’ll say, “I ran into Sarah. She’s about to pop!” I won’t have even noticed she’s pregnant. That kind of stuff just isn’t on my radar. Got a weird mole? A little extra junk back there? A unibrow? It just doesn’t register with me. If we ever run into each other on the beach, I hope you’ll return the favor. I’ll be the one in the muumuu having an awesome time.

  I know what you’re thinking, that I’ve got something figured out about how to be happy. Incorrect. I’m a work in progress in so many ways. The reality is, I never considered myself a looker or a hot babe—quite the opposite. Kristin can leave the house without makeup, wearing sweats, and still look terrific. If I do that, I look like a sun-damaged, prepubescent boy who buys jeans in the Husky section.

  I like to dress up and I always have makeup on, so you might think that means I take pride in how I look. It’s actually a couple of things, neither of which is pride. One is habit. My life began with freckles, which transitioned into teen acne, which then morphed into hormonal cystic acne in my twenties. I had a few good years post-Accutane, but then came pregnancy acne and melasma due to breastfeeding. To top it off, now I have age spots. I have run the life cycle of bad skin, and I have always hidden it under lots of makeup. And I’m going down doing so. I keep telling my husband I’m still waiting for my day skin-wise. If it means I have to get all kinds of surgery and fillers, I’m going to GD do it. I deserve it. I’ll look weird but young. Oh, the other reason is that I like to do it—I think makeup is fun. I feel like I’m being nice to myself when I put it on. It’s like playing to me. I like to put it on other people. I could spend hours in a cosmetic store. Why can’t I feel this way about the gym?

  Being smoking hot at some point in your life must be a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you were smoking hot; on the other hand, that’s a lot to maintain. I don’t really like how I look, and never have, so it’s never been a source of happiness for me—or even unhappiness for that matter. Just acceptance. That being said, I work with what God gave me, but I don’t take care of it that well. I should have been valuing this love machine more. I’ve been pretty rough on it. I just started eating healthy veggies and fruit (thank you, kids, and the pressure to set a positive example). I just started noticing the mental health benefits of walking daily (or twice a week, or whenever the stars align—don’t judge me). I’m old enough, and fearful enough of the universe, that I just want to be healthy. I still don’t think I’ll be on the cover of Lowrider magazine, unless they’re featuring people who have world-class antique cut glass collections, but happy and healthy is all I need at this point.