Sunday morning I was out taking a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood with the boys and enjoying all the wondrous sounds that nature had to offer. In other words, the cows were mooing, the chickens were clucking and my son was whining something about how none of his friends ever have to go on walks with their moms.
As we turned the corner our conversation was interrupted by a tiny blue car barreling around the corner blasting music at a volume unfit for the Sabbath. I gathered my little ones and we waited by the side of the road as the car pulled into the driveway and parked.
“College kids,” I thought to myself, as the young passenger exited the vehicle. I knew they were college kids because they had “the look”. You know - hat tilted to the side, seven different brighter-than-life colors on the sneakers that are always untied, pants sagging below their butt cheeks…
Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy the view of a taut, young ass just as much as the next cougar. But nobody needs an up-close and eye level view of your last night’s man-panties.
Anyway, I digress…
We continued on our walk as the young man and the driver laughed and reminisced loudly and in great detail about their shenanigans from the previous evening.
“Nobody wants to hear about your booze soaked, booty shaking, panty dropping Saturday night,” I thought as I walked extra slow, straining my ears, desperate to hear…
Back when a typical day for me didn’t involve something unidentifiable stuck under my fingernail and always included a shower this might have been close to a typical Sunday morning scenario for me also. Not so much the sagging pants and untied shoelaces but definitely the friend dropping me off in a barely-undrunk haze, shouting obnoxiously across a parking lot trying to figure out who made out with who and if I remembered hanging my panties from the chandelier or putting my bra on what’s-his-name’s labra-doodle – not that that ever happened.
Like this one time, I thought it would be awesome to take a co-worker to a strip club for her birthday and invite other co-workers to come along too. In hindsight everyone involved should’ve known I couldn’t be trusted in this situation but they allowed it to happen anyway (I use to have REALLY irresponsible friends!). Sometime in between attempting to climb on stage and get lassoed by a black cowboy and spilling about five drinks on strangers, I somehow managed to lose like a million of my things.
When I got to work early Monday morning and did the walk of shame through the office I actually thought maybe no one noticed. But as I was sitting at my desk and having a conversation with my boss, those co-workers started pouring in and as they passed by my desk one by one, they all placed a missing item of mine from Saturday night in a little pile on my desk. First my lip gloss. Then my scarf. And then my left red Jessica Simpson stiletto heal…I don’t think it would do any good to describe the look on my boss’s face as this was happening - surely by now you get the picture.
The point is that this is the type of fun you have when you’re young and dumb and you aren’t smart enough to realize that there are other innocent lives depending on you and learning from your example. Sure, I can still pay a babysitter and go out on a Saturday night. But there will still be 3 little boys who need to be fed and clothed and cared for when I wake up on Sunday morning with a hangover the size of Kim Kardashian’s period panties.
To put it quite simply, along with childbirth comes mother-birth. You try not to lose yourself when you become a parent but the truth is it’s impossible not to. You go into the mothering tunnel as an individual but you come out the other end with another human being attached to you and their needs seem far more colossal than your own. You still want to let loose sometimes but in the back of your head is the constant reminder that someone else’s life is depending on the decisions you make, no pressure.
These are the types of things I try to remember when I’m feeling nostalgic for those more careless days when I wasn’t worried about responsibilities. And I’m not trying to say that I prefer not to have them. The responsibility of raising children grows on you kind of like a skin tag in your armpit. It’s occasionally annoying but then you realize it actually keeps you company and you can talk to it and tell it secrets that your other friends tell you but make you swear you won’t tell another person as long as you live.
I’m a wife and a mom now. Those babies may have moved from my womb to my hip but they are always permanently embedded in my soul. Yes, I often look back, longingly and lonesome for the past, reminiscent of how much fun I once had as a young adult. But I try not to look for too long. It was an exciting road I traveled to find this life that I adore but I’d hate to miss any of the fun we’re having right this very second.
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