While unconditional love and patience and compassion and self-sacrifice are all hallmarks of a good mom, I think we need to declare a new trait. Because you know what's underrated and necessary in motherhood? Adequacy. With Pinterest moms, Instagram families, and the glossy filter of Facebook, few people are content with just "good enough". But after a lifetime of perfectionism and having six kids under 10 years old, I'm learning to embrace the adequate lifestyle.
Since I was little, I invested my time and energy in things I excelled at and left the rest alone. Whether it was straight As in school, a perfect 10 while I was an Olympic-level gymnast, or making finals in every competition I enter as a professional ballroom dancer, perfection has always been the mission. Even after my first kid, I felt like my hot streak was intact. She was the perfect baby. She was cute, sociable, and slept through the night. But after the next kid came along, and then another, and another... Well, motherhood is the antidote to perfectionism.
It started out slowly, my acceptance of adequacy. I could no longer take a trip to Target like a normal person and leisurely stroll the aisles and ogle the dollar section and home goods before shopping for food. Taking more than one kid to the store was a feat in many arenas: engineering ("how will I fit a carseat and a toddler and actual groceries into a grocery cart"), patience ("sure, you can help find the correct kind of mustard even though you can't read and are three feet tall"), aaaaand impassivity to strangers ("yes, my hands are full and one of my kids has found the joy of the word 'AVOCADO' and is loudly proclaiming it for you"). GET THE GROCERIES AND GET OUT before someone loses their mind was the new mission. And sometimes the mission failed.
By the time the older kids were in school, the lifestyle was full blown. Every year, parents are invited to school to watch their third graders present their civil war history projects. About half the kids will have AMAZING tri-fold posterboards with coordinated colored background paper and consistently spaced lettering and graphics suitable for the Apple Keynote, complete with a prop cannon bought on Amazon. My kid will have a poster with rainbow letters that you can kind of read from the fourth row and a small pencil-drawn kitty in the corner because OBVIOUSLY there were cats on the battlefield, MOM and her prop cannon will be made out of an empty oatmeal can. Have I gotten invested in school projects over the years? YES. My kindergartner's life timeline that I made into a comic strip was SO COOL. Do I have to remind myself to step back and let my kids find their own interesting civil war facts and appropriate font sizes? YES. Did I help them enough by reminding them to do their homework, looking up how to do a bibliography for the 75th time since I was 12, and buying the basic posterboard? YES.
There's times when adequacy makes it hard to live in the moment. We go to the zoo about once a month. It's a big zoo with lots of animals and fun non-animal things to do like a splash pad and two different playgrounds. Sometimes we go and everyone is bright-eyed and excited yet disciplined and the weather is sunny and 78º and I brought the exact number and variety of snacks to please everyone. But most of the time, someone is tired and merely the walk from the parking lot to the front doors is a forced march and everyone wants to eat in the cafeteria and it's too hot on the Tropics Trail and it's too cold on the Northern Trail and WHY ISN'T THE SPLASH PAD OPEN, MOM and "it's January in Minnesota" is not an acceptable answer and at least two people are crying on the way home from this culmination of circumstances. On these monthly excursions, I'm generally left wondering what the point of these "fun" family outings is. But at the end of the night when we gather round for prayers and say two things we're thankful for, "going to the zoo" is always on the list. Thankfully their little brains seem to outweigh togetherness over the poor snack selection and I can chalk these outings up to being completely adequate childhood memories.
Every day, there's opportunities to lord my perfectionist streak over my kids' heads. Sure, I "tiger mom" some ballroom dance lessons and instrument practice, but the dishes could be more thoroughly washed and rinsed, their handwriting on homework could be more legible, they could tame their bedhead more firmly and wear their toddler shoes on the correct feet, or not eat a banana for their ninth meal in a row. But have I fed them, clothed them, talked to them, and loved them today? Cheers.
