Mommy, Do You Remember the Naked Ladies?

I am a mosaic artist. I make stuff with little broken shards of tile, ceramics, glass etc. Put all those itty bits together and you can create something very cool, when it is whole.

I think my kids are going to have a certain set of memories about their Mother. Little bits and pieces that make-up the whole.

Dear God. Help me. Help them. I’m sure posterity won’t be kind . . .

Ah . . . there’s the blowing my top over the forgotten homework (Visualize hair pulling: Mine, not theirs. Though if pulling their hair might work, I’d try that too.) What?!? You forgot again??? Blondie, that is three days in a row. What is it going to take? You want Mommy to go to school with you tomorrow. In my sleepy sweater? Cuz I’ll help you remember to bring that homework home . . . you get the picture.

There’s the age old favorite and constant lament: Really? You can’t pick up your shoes? You were going to die without these Ed Hardy’s and now you can’t be bothered to PUT THEM AWAY??? I’m throwing them out. I swear to God you can go to school barefoot…

There is the one of Mommy losing her shit as the dog sails over the 6 foot wall into the neighbor’s yard, AGAIN. “Shit! Dammit! Someone get that dog! Be careful of the electric fence – which doesn’t seem to be working. Glowie – call her! She’ll come for you. I don’t know why she won’t come when I call her? (Uh, hysterical voice and wild, frightening gesticulating arms perhaps?)

It helps to know they will have one good memory.

My Blondie and I were hanging out in the pool the other day. By hanging out I mean I was laying on a raft with my Kindle in its Ziploc baggie (cuz that’s how I roll People!!!) while my daughter gently pushed me around the pool, stopping every now and then for me to have a sip of wine.

But I digress, as usual.

Blondie says to me . . . Mommy, do you remember the day the Art Studio Ladies came over and everyone went swimming in their bras and panties while they drank wine and ate cheese and crackers?
It was a lightning bolt moment for me.

Because of course I remember (I’m not that far gone . . . yet). It was a magical night in Palm Springs, this cool group of arty farty broads, who just decided the night was too beautiful not to slip in for a swim.

We were all bobbing around in our underwear, wine glasses held aloft. We were talking trash and giggling and admire (or thoughtfully looking away) from each other’s . . . ahem, undergarments.

Blondie’s comment struck me because . . . it was a story that I WANT my daughters to remember. I want that to be part of the “mosaic” of who their mother is . . . you know, someone not afraid to shed her clothes for an evening swim. Someone who drinks wine and eats cheese. (Cuz the wine sounds so much classier than all those martinis.) Someone who hangs with a group of bohemian, arty women who often look at me like I am a nutcase when I talk about my parenting overdrive.

Women who love beauty and will sacrifice pretty hands to make it.

Women who wear amazingly bright colors and fabulous drapey scarves and huge, bizarre dangly earrings.

Women who can talk about anything, cuz they are safe in their group. (And yes Ladies, I am sorry I can’t shut up about the trials of menopause.)

And women who don’t think twice about shucking off their clothes to have a magical moment.

Yes My Little Blondie. I remember. But what really matters to me is that YOU remember who your Mama is. Or at least who I want you to believe I am. #hope

Today and always.

#chicksrule