Disregard My Appearance

When you haven’t quite entered into mommy-hood your perspective on personal appearance is much different. Freshly showered, fully lathered in lotion, make-up just right, hair dried and straightened, outfit ironed and shoes polished, a touch of lip gloss and you’re set to go. Meanwhile, you may not notice other women running around in their yoga pants, hats on, head down; simply to shield the public from their un-showered, bags below the eyes, exhausted new sense of “self”. We don’t call those women lazy…we call them moms.

Of course you have a closet full of freshly laundered baby clothes, hung just right, according to size, color, style, and season. Their tiny socks and shoes all organized and ready to wear. And accessories of all colors to perfect the outfit. (Thank heavens, for Gary’s wallets sake, we had a boy first) My little guy now takes precedence: freshly showered, fully lathered in lotion, we skip the make-up of course, hair dried – combed – and styled, outfit coordinating perfectly to his socks and shoes, a touch of baby powder and he’s set to go.

Now don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t have it any other way. He looks like a doll baby and I…well, at least my clothes are clean. When we are in public, attention is no longer on what I look like, he’s the one getting the Oh’s and Ah’s and I’m beaming regardless of my appearance. It’s amazing how your priorities and sense of “self” truly change. Instead of heading straight to the women’s clothing section, I head straight for the baby clothes every time. I’m shopping for baby wipes instead of hair product, toys instead of trinkets, bibs instead of scarves.

I didn’t truly notice this new sense of “self” until I started back to working at the store on a more regular basis. Sure I had my getting ready schedule down pat by then (or at least I thought I did). The usual 45-1 hour prep time of showering and getting ready, was immediately reduced to 15 minutes, therefore meaning: freshly showered (minus the shaving), skip the lotion, face lotion and mascara is all the make-up I get time for, hair towel dried, outfit at least matching, skip the lip gloss (I can’t kiss all over my little man with lip gloss!) and I’m set to go. So I head to drop Cooper off at Lita’s or Grammy’s house, we Oh and Ah over him for a few minutes and I’m off to work. It’s never until about 2 hours in when I glance in the mirror and I’m immediately struck with a bit of shock, grief, humility, and humor. My towel dried hair looks like medusa. My mere mascara look can’t hide the bags under my eyes. My outfit doesn’t fit like it used to. And to top it all off, when I go to the bathroom, I notice my underwear are inside out! Now THAT is motherhood right there.

There is an up-side to all of this. When you DO have that 45 minute prep-time for a special occasion…you might as well be hitting the cat walk because you get a million compliments from the people who see you on a daily basis. It’s actually humorous – it’s like they forgot that you can look presentable.

Ladies (who haven’t taken the mommy train yet): please cut us some slack.

Mommies: you are forgiven.

Husbands/Daddies: Tell us we are beautiful, even if we look like zombies.

All of other men: get over it.

New sense of “self”: It’s ok. You won’t be a zombie forever! Soon they learn to dress themselves and you have a few more minutes to put on lotion!

But at the end of the day, the part about all of this that makes it completely OK is that showered or not, cute wardrobe or not, make-up or not…Cooper still smiles at me the same way…and to me, that’s all that matters.