I lost it with my kid yesterday. My mom-meltdown happened just minutes before I herded both of the girls outside for our annual first-day-of-school ritual. It went a little something like this:
“Ok, you stand here, no, not there, over there, OK, good, now you get next to your sister. Closer… closer. Wait. Stop. Not that close. Get your hands off her! You, calm down. She only poked you once and it wasn’t that hard. OK, now you hold this sign, and you hold this one. OK, good, now look at me. And smile. Can we please smile? Look at me. Eyes over here. Can you please freaking look at me? Hello?!?”
Eventually I got the picture, at which point I opened it in Instagram, filtered the crap out of it, and proudly posted it, evidence that at least for one brief moment, I was on top of my Mom shit.
I mean, that’s what these pictures are all about, aren’t they? Sure, in years to come, it will be nice to have a record of what the girls looked like in early elementary school, and not just because I fully intend to use the most ridiculous images in their bat mitzvah slideshows.
But at the end of the day, the carefully staged poses, the beautifully brushed hair, the hand-made signs and happy captions, well, they’re really a performance of parenthood–an opportunity to act as if we might actually be getting this parenting gig right.
You can read the rest of this post over at Kveller.com.
