My Shampoo Smells Like Baby Food

My shampoo smells like baby food.  Actually, to be perfectly precise, it smells like baby food that has been spit up.  This is what I think to myself every time I wash my hair.  And, upon thinking such a thing, I also think to myself, Gosh, I’m such a mom.  I love being a mom.  I really do.  And when my husband sees me do something with my daughter that’s really cute, and he says, you’re such a mom, I feel this little glow inside and I get very happy. 

But for some reason, when I think it now, after applying shampoo to my hair during a time that is supposedly my “me-time,” I feel like “mom” is a pejorative word.  I think it’s because in that instance, it brings up images of a frenzied, tired, disorganized woman with spit up on her shirt, wearing two different colored socks, letting her toddler eat the cat food because, well, it won’t kill him, and throwing together cheese sandwiches for dinner because there’s no time to make anything else.  I guess you could call this the “Roseanne Barr” mom, the prototype of which was obviously created in response to the “June Cleaver” images of the fifties.  You know the type, the woman who wears heels, a skirt and pearls every day, keeps a perfectly clean house, has perfectly clean babies, makes a four course meal for dinner every night and is pleasant and smiling through all of it.  Clearly, these images were in dire need of some kind of realistic response.  This Roseanne Barr image is, in my opinion, much more healthy and realistic.  And from a quick, unscientific Google search, it seems that many moms have identified with this archetype and wear it as a badge of honor.  And they should.  But, to be honest, that’s not really who I want to be.  I don’t want to be hurried and hectic and overtired and unconnected.  Of course, I don’t pretend to be able to strive to be June Cleaver, either.  I just wish there were images that fell somewhere closer to the middle from which to draw.   And, while we’re at it, I wish I could “have it all.”  And anyone who tells me I can have it all can shove it all up their ass, because it’s just not true.  I wish it were, but it’s not.  At least, not what “all” stands for to me.  I can’t be a successful attorney at a prestigious law firm and a good mom.  I just can’t.  And I’m so obsessed with Scarlett that I don’t want to be away from her for that long.  So, having it “all” is actually physically impossible within current time and space restrictions.

So, I guess I have to change my definition of what “all” is.  Or at least what I want.  And that’s where I find myself wishing there were more images of women who are mothers but who don’t wear spit-up as a badge of honor.  I’m not saying you never get spit-up on you, but just that you wash it off soon afterwards….