According to Uma

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(image via Fandango)

I have a terrible memory. That’s what my friends are for… to do my remembering for me. You could relay a story of where we were, who we were with, and even what we were wearing, and I may still have no recollection of said event. That has to mean something awful that perhaps a shrink will capitalize on one day, but I like to think of it as living in the moment. Carpe diem, right?

I watched a movie tonight called “Motherhood” with Uma Thurman. Great film. However, if we’re going with a depiction of real life, I know more mommies (including myself) who most days feel about as sexy an umpa lumpa…. Not at all like Uma. But I’m willing to go with it. Uma’s character is a world class fiction writer trapped in the everyday, raising 2 children in NYC. Her blog entitled “The Bjorn Identity” (brilliant) is a satirical blend of the convoluted parenting theories of other playground mommies and a few unspeakable fantasies of friends through which she may very well live vicariously. I promise not to be the movie spoiler, but one of her closing monologues is set to the tune of passion becoming a dim memory in the wake of motherhood. It sort of sounds like a book I’m reading right now. Just to give you an idea of what its about, the current chapter is called, “Whatever happened to me?” Sound familiar?

Like Uma, I too can be excused of hiding behind irony when I post throughout this blog. While most days I am at the core of me generally satisfied with the path my life had taken, I wonder if it is at all the case that I have my terrible memory to thank for it. You see, I have an enviable marriage (because my better half makes it so), staggeringly beautiful children, friends I don’t deserve, a community of faith that receives me in all my neuroses, varied creative interests and activities… I can “count my many blessings and name them one by one” to quote one of my two-year-old’s Bible songs. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss the days when my voice filled arenas and my name was written on a backstage door… when I’d have to adjust my watch to the present time zone and trade sleep for sightseeing in whatever city we happened to be playing music that night. I don’t at all miss the constant sense of rootlessness- that home was somewhere far away, the foreign beds, the early flights, or that saline taste in my mouth that comes from eating to much restaurant food. No. But there are some parts, that when my sense of forgetfulness fails me, I miss very much.

I have sworn not to use this self-publishing platform to vent or wallow, and certainly not to reminisce. But sometimes the deepest inspiration can be drawn from relating to real life, flesh and blood, vulnerability, don’t you think? Perhaps a salt and peppering of that in between date night challenges and Etsy finds wouldn’t hurt every now and then.

I think of you when I write from day to day, sitting in your cubicle, at your kitchen table, or at a stoplight, laughing or perhaps thinking, “did she really just post her indecent nursing exposure on the Internet” (see Ta-Ta Tacos post). And I pray that if you’ve read this far, you would know that I too am walking this tightrope journey called marriage, motherhood, and, for crying out loud, just plain being a woman! It isn’t easy. It isn’t “Uma” sexy. But I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Would you?

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