Ode to Moms

From the Mom B Shelter

Take Cover the Kids are Coming.
Original posting http://themombshelter.blogspot.com/2010/05/it-just-got-whole-lot-dirtier-around.html

Years ago, I ran into a girl I used to go to high school with in the grocery store. We hadn’t seen each other in ten years. Ten years! So much had happened to each of us in that time it was hard to decide where to begin. So I asked her what she had been up to. I was expecting an abbreviated synopsis of her life. Instead, her first sentence was “I’m a mom to two boys”.

What?! Excuse me? In ten years, all you have managed to do is reproduce? Seriously, I didn’t know where to go from there. Obviously she had been living a very sheltered life.

This occurred in 2001 BC, or ‘Before Children’ as I have come to name those fondly remembered years. I was out in the world, making my mark, living it up, getting educated, getting drunk, and getting jobs. The world was my oyster (with a slice of lemon and a dash of Tabasco).

In all of my BC years, I could not have ever envisioned (even with narcotics) what AC years were all about. Keep up, I’m talking about ‘After Children’. But here I am, in my AC years. And now I get it.

When I ran into that old high school friend, she wasn’t telling me about her boys because that is all she had done with those past ten years. She was telling me about her boys because her entire universe had shifted when they entered her life. They were her abbreviated synopsis.

So, for all of you in the AC club, this is my ode to you…
Here’s to cracked nipples and saggy boobs,
Celebrating flabby bellies and fallopian tubes,
Nine months of weight gain and nine years to lose it,
Cesarean, epidural or natural – you can’t choose it,
Incontinence, mucus plugs and the bloody show,
Waddling and chaffing wherever you go,
All this for the chance to never sleep again,
To ask of your teenager ‘Where have you been?’
To first lose your hair and then it turns grey,
To covering those bags under your eyes each day,
For the battle against hormones and cravings and such,
It can really all appear to be just too much,
And just as you’re about to yell ‘I’m through!’
Come the hugs, the love and the kisses too,
All of this rejuvenates you heart and your soul,
And simply getting through the day is no longer the goal,
So bring on the puke, the tantrums and shit,
Because this lady’s got a job that she won’t quit,
I’m someone’s Mom, and I’m proud to say
That you Moms all rock! Happy Mother’s Day.