I’m hanging up my cape.  It hurts to admit this.  I’m not even sure if I can really do it.  The ugly truth is that I stink at being Super Mom.  I’ve always been an over achiever, but I just can’t pull this one off.  I cannot meet my own expectations.

God knows I’ve tried.  I bake cakes, cookies, and cupcakes for all sorts of occasions and school events.  Help in the kindergarten classroom, although only once a week, and I feel badly that I cannot handle committing to more.  I spent hours this fall putting together gift baskets for the school carnival silent auction.  I sew Halloween costumes.  Make Christmas ornaments with the kids.  Help get holiday gifts for my parents to give others since shopping is harder for them now.  Chauffeur to soccer, ice skating, basketball, dance, and birthday parties.  Help with homework.  Discipline, encourage, laugh and cry. 

But when I am not dressed as the caped crusader, no Bruce Wayne with faithful butler Alfred is left to fill the void.  More of a very mortal Oscar Madison with Felix aspirations.  My home is a pigsty.  I clean every chance I have, every spare moment.  Going to the bathroom?  Well, I’ll just grab that laundry basket and empty the dryer on my way.  Phone call?  Fold clothes or do dishes while talking.  Four mornings a week are devoted exclusively to serious cleaning.   The two oldest children are pushed to do what they can to contribute, although I have to threaten dire consequences to get results.  My husband works long hours, but spends his weekends vacuuming and doing yard work.  Despite all this, we live in a landfill. 

I know there are worse homes than mine.  I’ve seen them on TV.  They make me look like a pretty good little housekeeper.  Ever seen the show “How Clean Is Your House?”  with the two British ladies who go to the nastiest abodes in the U.S. to clean them up?   Having seen how those more than two standard deviations from the mean approach household hygiene, I think I am safe in saying the health department will not be putting yellow tape across my front door and taking my kids away.   But my hovel is bad enough that I live in fear of unexpected guests.  It takes me a week to get ready for a play date.  

There are so many other tasks left undone.  Lots and lots of papers to be filed.  The blinds I keep meaning to put up in the boys’ room because Jackson thinks his window is scary.  The ancient and filthy sheers in the office window I need to replace.   Pictures never hung.  The disaster I know awaits me in the back of my closet where the cats have been sleeping.   The mystery boxes in the garage that have been there since we first moved into this house four years ago.  The dust on my floor-to-ceiling shelves.  The huge box of photos where every memory is stuffed haphazardly.  The pants that need mending,   The toys that need to be sorted and donated, or dumped.  

And then, there is me.  I am gaining weight and breaking out.  My hair needs a cut and at least a quickie home dye job.  I am so tired at night I fall asleep with my two year old, before I’ve had a chance to brush my teeth or take nightly medications.  I look like hell and I know it.  So, I am going to have to re-prioritize and learn to live with what I cannot do before I find myself drooling in a hospital bed somewhere.    Somehow I am going to have to forego some of those things “I have to do.”  Of course, as Mom my children will always come first, but I am going to have to draw the line and make room for me.  I feel guilty even saying that. 

I would like to know how other moms pull it off.  The ones who are active in every possible school event, teach Sunday School, and are Girl Scout Leaders.  When you stop by to return something their child left at your house, they come to the door with makeup on and invite you in to their tidy home for a cup of tea.  What is their secret?  Is it a God given talent I was born without?  I can’t find any other moms who are so obviously as discombobulated as I.  

One mother I know had to rush off after helping with the kindergarten Halloween party to have her “brows done” before meeting her husband for lunch.  My plans after the party involved the grocery store and a bottle of Pine Sol.  I don’t even know what one does to ones brows that needs to be done by a third party.  I mean, I pluck the unibrow and hunt out strays, but that’s as “done” as my brows get.  I can’t imagine having the time or funds to even consider anything more.  

Another friend was commiserating with me, laughing about mom’s whose children’s scrapbooks are always up to date.  Huh?  My kids don’t each have a scrapbook.  Unless you consider their whole rooms scrapbooks.  Oh, my mistake, I was thinking of scrapheap.   I’ve already told you where the family photos live.  If my children want additional mementos of their youth their mom has saved, they will have to look in the manila folders and plastic storage boxes where handprints and crayon drawings are tucked away, in mom’s jewelry drawer where plastic bags with names and dates hold tiny teeth, and in their own memory. 

Yet my children are bright, happy, and healthy.  They are well cared for and well loved, and they know it.  My husband and I are best friends.  There is enough love and laughter around our house to please Johnboy Walton.  I know in my heart that the rest of it is just window dressing.   And that is why I’ve decided to stop trying to ditch my day clothes for a leotard and tights every time I pass a phone booth.  The desire to do it all will probably never go away, but I am going to have to work harder at not doing it all than I ever have at trying to be Super Mom.  Our family memories will be of meals shared together, human pile ups on the sofa with Daddy at the bottom, good smells from the kitchen, and the same overall warm fuzzy feeling my parents gave me as a souvenir of my youth.   They will not be of how clean the carpet was, a skinny mom with great brows, or of our lovely décor.  

So be it.  I don’t look good in a cape anyway.