Grandma's World

I looked in the mirror, and didn't do a thing about it.

This is a fairly typical occurrence daily, minus the time to look in the mirror part. Monday through Friday From morning through afternoon I repeatedly tell myself I need to...here is where any number of taken for granted hygiene or personal necessities and activities would be inserted.

Interestingly, it is not unless I leave the house that this grandma phenom becomes a concern, embarrassingly so. At some point in those instances, it usually suddenly occurs to me that I neglected to apply deodorant, or while interacting or speaking with someone, I imagine them thinking something like, when is the last time she plucked those eyebrows?, or a little makeup would go a long way, or does she not own a comb?, and what's that stuff on her shirt?

When day-caring for a pre-schooler and his baby brother, things have the potential to be on the best of days, at least mildly askew. Weather in fact they are or not is mostly inconsequential, since I likely have not looked in the mirror at all, or have looked and done nothing about it. Either way, I feel quite self conscious that I am rumpled in some conspicuous way.

How have I come to this, again, I ask myself. Was there not supposed to be a completion date for my mothering duties? Wasn't I at this point in my life supposed to be off pursuing those dreams put on hold for the sake of the first batch of children? No one told me anything at all about the second batch being work. On the contrary, I was under the apparent misunderstanding that the second batch of kids was where at my whim, I would hop them up on sugar, buy them whistles and drums, keep them up too late and then send them home with their parents until the next time I chose to fill my schedule with them.

The second batch was supposed to allow for me to enjoy a squeaky clean fingerprint-free home. All the lovely fragile heirlooms were to be displayed for my viewing pleasure, even low. I was to have a cool drink in a tall glass, all my own. I could stay up late because mornings would not begin until I decided they would. And all this my reward after many years of paying my dues, doing the hard thing. It was to be Grandma's world. I find instead that it is still Elmo's world. Maybe the two worlds are not so dissimilar, both unrealistic.

The mirror is not an ally unless there is time to linger before it to examine, assess, and then implement a plan for damage control. Without time to manage the findings there in the glass, the mirror's only purpose is to mock the image it reflects. From that point of view it is better not to know what the mirror would hold against me. My own imagination, kinder.

I wonder, if it is true that I have lived under this delusion for all these years, am I also kidding myself about the days yet ahead? Here's what I know; At the end of these days, when the children's parents have picked them up and I am exhausted, I miss them. When the children are here for eight or nine hours of five days a week, I miss me. There is much to be missed in life, it can't all be fit in.

For the time being, I think it is preferable to see my reflection in the smiling eyes of my grandbabies than in any old mirror. In one there is no condemnation, while the other judges harshly. One reflects a Grandma, in a neat tidy world, and the other sees this grandma fit in nicely with a red scraggly haired puppet who lives in a house of crayon drawn furnishings, that I might add, are colored outside the lines and in every which direction.

If you happen to see me out and about and I look, well lets face it, a mess, wonder no more. You are probably correct to think these are yesterdays clothes, I have not combed my hair, plucked my eyebrows in weeks, and I cannot say for sure what is on my shirt. You would be right to think I have not looked in a mirror, or perhaps I actually did and did not do anything about it. You should know it is largely because those whose needs matter most right now, are more attracted to Elmo types.

P.J.