On Becoming Mom

The other day, in the midst of checking out at the grocery store, my little mister wanted to press all the buttons on the credit card reader (what two year old wouldn't??  It has lights and buttons and it's perfectly at the level of a child sitting in the front of a cart.  They're pretty much asking for it.)  After using my best I'm in public mom voice to tell him it's not ours so we don't touch, he reached over...grabbed my hand...silently put it in his mouth...and chomped down.  I pulled it away and went about my business, completely ignoring that it even happened.  It was only after I looked up at the clerk who said, "Did he just bite you?" in her best you are clearly a failure as a parent voice did I realize the amount of judgement in her gaze.

Confession: my son is a biter.  Clarification for all my mom friends who suddenly feel the need to reschedule any future play dates: he only bites me (and sometimes Patrick, but if he wants to whine about it, he can start his own blog.)  Yes, filed under "I" for irony, the dentist has a child who bites.  We have been consistently disciplining him for it since he was old enough to understand (ie: a while) and have seen results that wax and wane depending on his current developmental stage.  But if you think for a second that I'm not motivated to eliminate this behavior, I have lots of bruises on my hands/arms/collarbone I would like to offer up in rebuttal.  Trust me grocery store lady, it's hurting me A LOT more than it's hurting you...literally and figuratively.

But as all moms know, sometimes it's just not the time or the place to stage an all out disciplinary battle with your two year old.  And while checking out at the grocery store, I just wasn't fighting this battle.  After all, he wasn't throwing an audible tantrum; and sometimes systematically ignoring bad behaviors is touted as an acceptable discipline technique.  Albeit that was not *exactly* what I was thinking in this situation.  No, it was much more along the lines of, "Please, please behave until we're in the car...I just want my spinach and overpriced Greek yogurt for crying out loud!!"

So after admitting that yes, he just bit me (followed by some nervous laughter on my part) the clerk decides to announce, "Well, you can tell you're a mom" using an incredibly haughty tone in order to make it excessively clear that she did not mean this to be complimentary in any way.

Now I am not a quick thinker; and much to my chagrin I do not possess the gift of being able to say the exact thing I mean to say at the exact moment I mean to say it.  So true to Kelsey fashion, I finished paying for my groceries, told the clerk to "have a nice day", and left the store with my head down.  It was only after I got my guy buckled in, packed the groceries in the back, and sat in the driver's seat that I began to process her words (if not the intent behind them).

"Well, you can tell you're a mom."  Good.  Then you must be able to see the love I have for my son.  The pride I have in him.  The long days and sleepless nights and how I wouldn't trade a single one of them for a million days of alone time.  The worry about state of the world around him.  The dreams for his future.  The inadequacy I feel on a daily basis.  The patience I somehow muster when my tank is empty.  The bliss of him telling me he loves me when I don't deserve it.  The fear of some unknown, horrible thing happening to him.  The nightly prayer of thanks that God knows best and saw fit to give such a blessing to me.

You see before I had my little mister, I wasn't sure I could do all of that.  Any of that.  I was terrified that I was going to be a huge disaster of a mother.  My child surely deserved better.  For 9 months I fretted, panicked, and cried because I was convinced I couldn't do it.  I knew being a mother was the hardest job ever created, and I feared I was not cut out for it.  But when the doctor handed him to me, all that worry seemed to fade away in the presence of a new mother's realization that I fiercely loved this little person that I just met.  Somehow I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would do anything in the world for this precious child.  And all those months of fretting, all that worry, all those feelings of inadequacy suddenly were not me being a failure as a mother, but rather just the first steps of my ongoing journey of being a mom.

So those words -"you can tell you're a mom" - no matter how snarky they might have been said, somehow validate that journey.  I must be doing something right because someone who knows absolutely nothing about me can tell that I'm a mom.  And to me, that's the best compliment in the world.  So Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!!  I'm proud to be one of you, bruises on my arms and all...