Independence Day

I know I'm a few weeks early for the 4th of July, but as I was vacuuming with my Dyson - the Rock Star of Vacuum Cleaners- (Mine is blue and purple with silver glitter and cleans up like dirt is food and it hasn't eaten in a fortnight) I was thinking about how this particular vacuum cleaner is marketed to exactly people like me: young, middle-class, and not so far removed from the days of smearing themselves with body glitter and staying out until sane grown-ups are getting up for their work day.

That was a very run-on sentence, but hopefully I expressed the point.

It seems like each generation pushes their right to break the mold further and further out. The previous generation burned their bras, protested war and inequality, and crafted the art of rock and roll. They asserted themselves as individuals and smashed societal expectations for conformity. Some of it was noble, some of it wasn't, but for better or for worse it made it possible for my generation to have a much wider avenue to explore through our adolescence.

As I pondered this thought, I meandered on to the idea that my generation is launching our own, if somewhat less globe-shaking, rebellion. My generation is redefining what it means to be a mother. I realize that I am a part of a rising tide of mothers who refuse to fit anyone else's model of motherhood; this "new feminism" is an assertion of our right as women to be whatever we want to be. No longer is it a choice between "barefoot and pregnant" or "career-driven". A mom can be anything or everything she wants to be, and accept the beauty of who she is.

I am not afraid to admit to my depression, or to the treatment of it. I am proud to be a twenty-seven year old, stay-at-home mother of two, with a mortgage, a station wagon, and a tattoo. It's okay that my kids favorite tunes are Jimi Hendrix and Dave Matthews. There is no shame in choosing to forego my degree until later in my life; there would be no shame in choosing not to.

A few months after my first son was born, I was talking to my mother near dinner time. I mentioned that I was cooking dinner and still in my pajamas from that morning. A testament to the time she lived in, she said (with barely suppressed horror) "Oh, Honey... I don't think a husband should ever have to come home to a wife still in her pajamas."

I told her, without hesitation, "Mom, he'll just be happy they're not the same pajamas I was wearing yesterday."

To be a Mom today means that it's okay to admit that I am not perfect - as a human being or as a mother. I'm not ashamed that I have been known to slack on the laundry, that the sink is often full of dirty dishes, that I don't manage to get a shower every day. It's even all right to admit that there are days when I seriously consider placing my preschooler out on the sidewalk in front of my house with a sign around his neck that says "Free To Good Home".

I am okay with the fact that my kids' faces are sometimes dirty, that we sometimes go outside in our bare feet, and that I sometimes let my three-year-old have sips off my diet Pepsi (which I just cleaned up a puddle of after he found the half-finished one I left sitting on the coffee table.) I'm not afraid to admit that some days I cry uncontrollably out of joy or frustration - or sometimes both, simultaneously.

Every day is a struggle for a mother; we have to live minute by minute, meal to meal, chore to chore. We don't get to pee alone, to eat hot meals, to talk on the phone without a million interruptions. We have to fight to remind our children, our husbands, that our bodies are our own. We give our children everything with very little in the way of thanks - and their love and happiness is all we desire in return. We struggle to find a way to be everyone we need to be - Wife, Mother, Lover, Cook, Maid, Therapist, Nurse, Secretary. We snatch a minute or two for ourselves when we can, try to remember not to talk baby-talk in adult company, and get way too little sleep.

But to be a mother today comes with a perk my mother never had - the right to be honest about it. We can commiserate with other mothers, demand help from our spouses, and even sometimes complain. We can admit that this strange career of motherhood is not easy, that we are not Wonderwoman. We can say out loud that sometimes we wish we could run away from home, or at least occasionally get a hot cup of coffee and use the bathroom all alone. We can have a tattoo and obsess over "Grey's Anatomy" and occassionally spend way too much on shoes.

And we can hand a very hearty "Fuck You" to anyone who tries to tell us that's not okay.

Rock On, Mamas. Rock On.