On Self Image, Invisible Connections, and Mornings

This morning, I looked into the mirror, sighed, and wondered why my recent haircut hasn’t held its shape for as long as the last one did. I traded shorts for yoga pants, brushed my teeth and applied lotion hoping that it’d plump up the papery skin beneath my eyes.

My son was downstairs eating breakfast. It was almost time to catch the bus to school. “Hey Buddy,” I said. “We have to finish practicing your spelling words this afternoon, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, and looked a little less happy than he did before I’d reminded him.

“You’re breaking him with the homework,” the voices hollered upstairs. “Shut up,” I thought, but did not say.

I stood, leaned behind my little boy, and wrapped my arms around his chest. I whispered in his ear. Told him that I’m so proud to be his mom.

“Your breath is terrible and minty” he said.

***

This morning, I saw a mom at the bus stop. “She’s so put-together,” I thought. Looked down at my yoga pants and criticized myself for not having gotten up earlier, put on real clothes, and for the fact that yoga pants are the most comfy of all because I rarely go to the gym these days. “I bet she goes to the gym every morning,” I thought about put-together-mom.

***

“Hey Tucker,” one of my son’s friends smiled at him today. “Why’d you call me taco?” my son asked. “I didn’t call you taco,” his friend said laughing. I said “Tucker!”

It did sound like “taco” and my son corrected him. “It’s Tuck-ow,” he said. I thought about how they both use the sound a “w” makes instead of an “r,” and wondered about how kids with speech delays hear themselves in their heads. I walked home and thought about how my son says his name closer to “taco” than to Tucker, hears himself fine, but hears his friend’s pronunciation as closer to “taco.”

***

This morning, I stopped at the store. We needed strawberries and I didn’t think about changing out of my yoga pants before going. I saw a friend I haven’t seen in awhile and tried to avoid her, remembering my hair and my face in the mirror this morning. Looked down at my yoga pants, feeling badly again. “You have crappy self image for a reason,” the cart whispered. I studied the sale items at the end of an aisle hoping my friend would walk by. 

“Kristi” she said.

I glanced around, as if confused, hoping she’d see what a rush I was in, even though I wasn’t.

Again. “Kristi!”

I turned, found her face, and smiled. We hugged.

“You look so pretty” she said.

“Um, I, um, yoga pants? Hair?” I replied. “It’s your hair,” she said. “I love the new cut.”

I realized I’m every mom. That each of us looks in the mirror in the morning and sees a version of ourselves that’s older than we remember.

That each of us fights with our kids over homework and sees little faces on the wall in the bathroom who yell at us about not being enough.

***

This afternoon, I walked to the bus stop to pick up my son. I saw one of the moms that I really like, smiled, and said hello. “I love your shoes,” I said, meaning it. They looked stylish and comfy and like something I’d buy.

“These old things?” We chatted about her finding them on sale and getting them in navy and in black. In her, I saw me, that morning, when somebody told me she liked my haircut.

Walking home, I wondered whether we’re really so needy and insecure that we perk up only when noticed.

Instead, I decided that it’s the invisible connections.

That each of us does not see ourselves through our crappy self esteem. But others see us, and we see them.

That put-together mom? She is all of us. The yoga-pants mom with the too-grown-out haircut is as well.

***
This has been a Finish the Sentence Friday post. This week’s sentence is “The things I’ve seen this morning…”
Your hosts are, as always me (Kristi from Finding Ninee) and this week’s fabulous sentence thinker-upper, Leanne from Hope.

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