Pretense...

This past Saturday our family was at a birthday party for my friend's son who was turning 3. At some point, the kids went outside to play while many of the adults sat around the kitchen, talking and eating too much cake and too many chips! When I glanced out the sliding glass door to the swingset, I noticed that Grace's dress (she always has to be such a diva, lately, so the jeans have been hidden in the back corner of her dresser for some time), was flapping wildly in the breeze while she pumped her legs up and down on the swing... and... well... you get the picture... as did anyone there who happened to be outside or looking that way...

Not wanting to embarrass her, I went to the door and called out (pretty softly, at first) that she needed to get up and sit on her dress. Except she didn't understand what I was telling her to do, so I had to repeat myself several times, until finally she got the point. Except I'd drawn a small audience.

One of the ladies asked me what I was saying, and so I told her about Grace's dress. And she said something to the effect of, "Wow... I would have been yelling if it was me!" Then, my friend Kelly (it was her house we were at) said that I am always so calm... and for just a brief moment, I imagine that my chest puffed out, and the "Supermom" crest appeared, and some epic music played... (OK... wait... it's like one of those bad daydream sequences again... actually, I am just swollen from breastfeeding, the only thing "appearing" on my shirt these days is leakage from the same, and the epic music was Ian, singing his theme song)... but anyways, I felt kind of proud...

For about 2 1/2 seconds...

Then I remembered how much I hate pretense...

It's just that... well... I'm not sure anyone has ever called me "calm" in my entire life! I usually sort of exude this Type A, choleric-melancholy personality, mixed with a healthy dose of OCD. "Intense" has been a much more common descriptor...

I started thinking about the many times I've lost my temper and raised my voice over stuff that really amounts to... nothing... when I stop to think about it...

And it occurred to me that I think I'd like to be that calm person that apparently I've tricked Kelly into believing I am over the past couple of years... (Kelly, if you're reading this, I hope you're getting a good laugh out of it!)

I really try to be transparent. Recently, I read an opinion about an author who had grown more transparent in her work as time went by, and the reviewer felt that was a negative quality... I'm sure I read the review with my mouth hanging open...

But I don't want "transparent" to translate into "bad"... It doesn't have to be about airing all of my dirty laundry. It can be about becoming the person I should be in the first place.

I want to be calm... and cool (well... OK... that's probably never going to happen)... and collected, but I don't want it to be a masquerade. I want to really be all those things.

I don't want to be the mom who screams at her kids in public... but I don't want to be the mom who yells at her kids at home, either... ever... I mean, unless one of them is about to touch a hot burner or run out in front of a car or something. That's what yelling should be reserved for...

Just some thoughts...

Lisa