Do you ever feel like you’re in that Talking Heads song Once in a Lifetime and wonder how you got here? Sometimes I look around and have an outer body experience. This is especially heightened when I find myself sitting in those tiny hard plastic chairs in my son’s classroom for parent/teacher conferences. I squat in that little chair and wonder what am I doing here and where is the responsible grownup who knows stuff? My standard line to my sons is “I know stuff,” but truth be told, I just google stuff.
Sometimes I hear my children yelling “Mom!” and I look at myself from some ethereal place up above and I think “Are they talking to me?” How is it possible that I am someone’s mother? This can’t be so. Someone alert the authorities! Of course I understand the biology behind it all. I just wonder how my life seems to have just happened at full speed in the last 46 years. My 30th high school reunion is just weeks away. 30 years. Damn. How did I get my name printed on these degrees from universities that still astonish me? How did I become the experienced consultant whom young professionals come to for mentoring (ha!)? How did I come to live in such a lovely home and have a mortgage, life insurance, and a 401(k)? How did I become Mrs. Ewen rather than simply Ilina? How did I become so dang responsible? How did I become a card carrying grown up?
“Time isn’t holding us
Time isn’t after us”
When I look in the mirror I don’t see a grown up. I still my 20-something self. Sure, the hair is grayer, the eye circles darker, the bags thicker. I see the wrinkles but I don’t focus on them. I surely can’t lose sleep over them, lest I get even bigger dark circles and bags! When I look in the mirror I see decades of laugh lines and a furrowed brow that are physical manifestations of equal parts joy and heartache. I don’t see the girl I was as much as I see the woman I have been becoming. You see, I don’t think I’m there yet. I joke that I didn’t peak until I hit my 40s, but I’m pushing 50 now and still feel I haven’t peaked. Perhaps I’m still clay in the sculptor’s hands, still being shaped and molded, not quite ready for the kiln. I’m evolving and learning, still making mistakes while learning from old ones. A work in progress, you might say.
Never do I feel more imposter than when I’m parenting. While there are myriad parenting resources, there is no guidebook. It’s the one thing we do on instinct alone, especially those early days. And then the children grow, their needs change, the world evolves. And we, alongside them, teeter on the path of literal and figurative growth, eeking out our best. And if that means we pretend to know what we’re doing along the way, so be it.
“And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go to?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?…Am I wrong?
And you may say to yourself yourself
My God!…What have I done?!”
This month we discuss themes of love and family. Read more from my fellow #AsianMomBloggers:
Maria at Bicultural Mama: 5 Girl Names Using the Chinese Word for Love
Grace at HapaMama: Different Love Languages
Phyllis at Napkin Hoarder: A Six Year Old’s Love Advice
Stephanie at A Family Lives Here: Love is Action
Thien-Kim at I’m Not the Nanny: 5 Things I Love About My Family
Love the line, “Perhaps I’m still clay in the sculptor’s hands, still being shaped and molded, not quite ready for the kiln.” It’s true, we’re always evolving and learning and that’s a good thing!
That song. Pretty much every day.