In my environment, the mothers are almost all supermothers. What does that mean? They take over all driving services, regularly stand on the sidelines or count points at tournaments. They bake bread and cake, oh, what do I say? - they bake whole buffets, thread Haloumi mango sticks and read bedtime stories. They feed their little ones according to the latest findings of the clean food movement and collect the snack boxes themselves. They are never too tired to listen, they trick the Internet and strictly follow the rules when it comes to who can watch what series for how long. They are the last to turn off the lights and spread mildly smiling kisses on the cheeks of their content sleeping children; of course each sleeps in its own bed and never wakes up at night. Not a single iPhone is placed near the bed in the households of the supermothers, all devices sleep well in the cosy kitchens, where the demeter muesli already precedes.
Where do I stay with this role-model game? After all, mother for 15 years. And still looking for my job description on this challenging field. My tears and outbursts of rage and my desperate telephone calls with like-minded people of my species are countless after so many years. I know that I love my children from the heart, but I also know that I don't conform to the norm of an ideal mother and probably won't be able to do so again in this life. I can still run so much around the Lake and talk to myself. And now it dawns on me that maybe someone should start to admit that being a mother can mean total stress. No job is as exhausting as this one and nobody really prepares you for it (otherwise you might not even do it). I am happy about every mother and every father who admits that doubts and despair can be on the agenda. At least with me. The children don't just grow over your head, but argue like rhetoric nerds. Where do they learn it, is it on Musically (funny app) or do they practice it in school? For my part, I am sometimes really speechless and feel that my children educate me or at least wrap me around their fingers.
But there has been a turning point in our family life that I didn't want, but couldn't prevent either: for three years now we've been living like thousands of other separation families in two apartments with patchwork reality. I don't want to evaluate that at this point. But I've thought about my play as a mother and now a few things run differently, more loosely, and somehow relaxation comes in. My perfectionism has diluted together with my grief. Maybe in ten years I will say: well that this has happened to me, because so I became a mother a second time.
So when I walk around the Lake in jogging trance in the morning and have an inner conversation, I think about many situations with my 3 little kids- ticks, tricks and tracks.
Maybe I exaggerated in the morning, when I asked my big one to not always use the Thermomix with her superfood grains and just eat a toast. Or in the evening, when I lie down in bed with the girls, with a giant bag of sweets and we watch the pedagogically valuable Bachelor together, I try as a former TV journalist to classify the show, so explain to my loved ones that all dialogues are written, the protagonists cast and really nothing is actually real.
We like to fall asleep already during the second commercial break and unfortunately it sometimes happens that we oversleep the teeth brushing and the expensive braces spend the night somewhere else. Even if we wake up again at the end of the day at the rose distribution, we usually experience this slightly dazed, sugared and I am already happy when I find the off button on the remote control.
For a handful of cents I send my boy with the So Sue package orders to the kiosk where his salary is immediately converted into football tickets.
If I can force them into an exhibition from time to time, I have to admit that I secretly enjoy their protest (but also because I know that they usually find it quite interesting). Last winter I talked everyone into skating for half an hour. Actually, it's an absurd thing, considering that such great activities cost a lot of money. I got my money's worth and always flew away dancing. The child inside me drove pirouettes and had a good run. Unfortunately, that was the last time they wanted to go on the ice with me. But my little one has discovered that I am good with the football. I can always be in his team at football now and if I manage to score a goal or give him a good pass I get a kiss as a reward. He came up with that because he knows that I enjoy it. I used to make him know that you grow better and faster by kissing and cuddling a lot. Pretty mean actually - what would my therapist say?
