Ate My Words

It is confession time here at The Thoughts I Think.  The story I am about to reveal to you is tragic. I would really rather not admit it to you but because it might be helful I will expose myself (via printed page of course).

Before I was a parent …now, prepare yourselves…but before I became a mother I had… ideas about parenting** GASP!** I know, I know, it is the number one rule in life to never say never but I did, and unfortunately I did it with frequent censure.

The days before my tiny tot entered the world I used to wonder how a woman could walk into a public place looking like she had just completed a 10K marathon complete with children who looked like they were dressed and styled by chimpanzees.

I used to say, “Wow, I will never look like that in public and I certainly would never allow my children to look that way either.”

Ah, parenthood makes fools of us all; fast forward from those fateful words to yesterday morning. 

I found myself at the grocery store in what appeared to be clothing but was in fact various forms of paper towel; my sweatshirt had been sneezed on, coughed on and the sleeves had been used to mop up medicine that was too disgusting to be swallowed.  I hadn’t slept in two days, hadn’t showered in three, my hair was covered by my husband’s ball cap, my shorts had a lime green stain from the popsicle puddle my child left on the couch and I think I was wearing shoes but I can’t be a hundred percent certain.  The only thing I did know for certain was that I looked like some sort of bridge-dwelling troll out in search for cough suppressant.

Up until that point my daughter had been sick for a week. Unbeknownst to me not all mothers get that super-mom-immunity that is supposed to take place at the time of childbearing, so I had been sick right alongside her.  

When the pharmacist informed me that they didn’t sell cough medicine anymore for children under the age of six, I caught a glimpse of myself on a security mirror, you know, one of those big round ones that they use to spy on shoplifting patrons.  As much as I would like to blame my reflection on the fun-house properties of that mirror I realized that I was looking at the woman I swore I’d never be.

Pitifully, I went home without the medication I had searched so vehemently for and proceeded to eat my words for breakfast, lunch a dinner.

As it turns out irony tastes an awful lot like cough suppressant.