Taking a Step Forward

I realize that I haven’t written anything in quite some time. For those of you who are mothers, I’m sure you can appreciate how all-consuming motherhood is. For the last year and three weeks, my life has revolved around a single focus: my son. Every minute that the little wiggle worm is awake I am interacting with him, playing with him, teaching him new words, encouraging him, cheering him on, and taking him on various baby-friendly adventures. The time that he is asleep I spend planning out his meals for the week, researching vaccines and child development, planning new trip ideas, and working on his scrapbooks and photo albums. Most days end with me collapsing on the couch, a harried and hungry and un-showered mess.

Yesterday was the first day since school let out that I’ve spent more than a few minutes apart from Connor. His nanny Victoria came over to watch him for the afternoon. She wanted to see him throughout the summer so that he would remember her and it wouldn’t be such a shock when I went back to work. So I decided to get some errands done while she was here. Driving to the salon with an empty car seat bobbling behind me was strange. Maneuvering that ridiculously large cart around the Wegman's Friday afternoon grocery shopping crowd unencumbered by 19 pounds of baby strapped to my chest was weird. But it gave me time to reflect on my life while I silently decided between the smooth and crunchy peanut butter.

With the way things are going, I most definitely am going to be that woman who at 46, sends her son off to college, comes home a blubbering mess, finally takes a look at herself in the mirror for the first time in 18 years and sees a shocking sight. What she sees looking back at her is a fat, middle-aged woman with no friends, no relationship with her husband, and frankly no identity of her own.

Yes, I can see it now. And it’s a scary thought.

Like any good mother, I want to be the best mother I can be. I want to be loving, involved, and caring. I want to be there for Connor’s first step, his first “I love you,” all of the soccer games, the band concerts, the school plays, the parent-teacher nights. All of happy times and all of the sad times. But while I want to do all of this, I don’t want to make Connor my one and only hobby. I’m sure that twelve years down the road, my adolescent son will certainly appreciate a mom with her own identity whose life does not revolved around him.

So yesterday while I was out on the town, baby-free, I took my first step in two years towards developing an interest of my own. I bought my very first pair of running sneakers. I went to one of those running stores where the skinny college kid behind the counter observed me critically as I strode back and forth across the store like a silly short runway model and subsequently recommended the perfect sneaker for my awkward stride. I’m going to be a runner! I’m going to take it slow, day by day, but I hope to eventually run a half-marathon, maybe even by the end of this year. I’m so excited about it!

This will be me next year:

There are so many things that I want to do and so many challenges I want to take on. Motherhood is the greatest and most important challenge but I realize how important it is to keep up with my own identity. Many of the things that I want to do are super expensive, like professional photography classes and getting my Ph.D., but some, like writing and running, are not. And for what it’s worth, the continued development of my own identity will help me in my ultimate goal: being the very best mother for my son.

My sweetheart: