My Supermom Moment

Before having baby girl, there were times I thought my life was stressful. There were times I thought I had a lot going on. Times I felt overwhelmed with housework. Then we had a baby. And I discovered whole new universes of overwhelmed. In a life that is a constant stream of feeding and changing and playing and cooking and picking up and washing clothes and putting away clothes and packing diaper bags and oh-lets-not-forget-everything-you-used-to-do-before-you-had-a-baby, feeling like I am surviving with my nose barely above water is pretty much a constant. And I've gotten used to that feeling. Comfortable surviving on the brink of chaotic collapse. In a life like this, moments where I feel like I'm not dropping seven of the balls I'm juggling, moments where I actually feel like I am not only juggling everything successfully, but able to even brandish a "hey, come on, throw me another couple! I got it!" attitude are few and far between. But when they do happen: so, so awesome.

Cue scene from yesterday. TH was working late. I am unloading the car. In my left arm, I'm holding baby girl, who by the way no longer likes to be plopped on the living room floor with all her toys while I unload the car thank you very much separation anxiety crap. In my right arm, I am holding my breast pump, my purse, baby girl's diaper bag, and two grocery bags. Baby girl is holding her favorite toy of the hour--an orange plastic ring. I think in the back of my mind how it would be a bad thing for her to drop her favorite toy of the hour onto the floor of the garage, replete with dead bugs and lawn fertilizer crumbs and whatever I track in on my tires every day.

I'm sure we can all guess what happens next.

To recap: left arm--baby girl; right arm--five different bags probably totaling about 30 pounds. Favorite toy of the hour held in the one-handed grasp of a six month old who is still learning how to control her hand muscles. Mom and baby treading over a relatively germy, dirty, potentially toxic floor.

Cue dropping of orange plastic ring.

I never played soccer. Not really. I was on the city league for two years when I was like 8 years old. And I helped my friend coach the soccer team at the middle school we taught at a few years, but I was really just there to hang out and have fun. But somewhere along the way I must have picked up some sort of soccer skills by osmosis because in that moment, standing in my garage trying to balance breast pumps and diaper bags and grocery bags and baby girl and her favorite toy of the hour, in that moment when her orange plastic ring dropped from her chubby little hand, my inner soccer star emerged.

I caught the falling plastic ring between my right knee and the grocergy bags I was holding in my right hand. So now I'm standing on one foot, baby girl in left arm, breast pump, purse, diaper bag, and two grocery bags in right arm, and one orange plastic ring pinned between my right knee and said accumulation of bags.

And then (now, I'm going to need you to picture this in your mind like you're watching a wicked cool slow motion scene in a movie), then I raised my knee and the grocery bags up with enough force to toss the orange plastic ring up into the air, catching it with my left hand (the one that is also holding my baby) on its way down.

No shittin'.

I paused for a beat to revel in what I had just done, to mentally pat myself on the back, and as we walked back into the house, I kinda felt like there should be some cheering going on or something. But no one was there to have witnessed my moment. No one but baby girl, who will never remember, who was already clamoring for a new favorite toy of the hour. Life didn't stop to celebrate. A heartbeat later and it was time to keep juggling, time to steam veggies and do dishes and fold laundry and feed baby girl dinner and once again I was just a regular mom, trying to keep up.

But for that moment in the garage, for those five seconds that seemed like thirty, I was a supermom who could do it all.