Lately, I’ve been a Someday Mom.
You know, the kind of mom that has all the good intentions and fun activities stored away for a day in the near future {surely}. Someday.
The kind of mom who holds onto hope after hope that someday she will get all of her youthful energy back {and, gosh, I’m still technically in my twenties for another month!} and have the spunk to do all the fun things she wants to do with her kids.
The Someday Mom is the kind of mom who desperately wants to have some time to do the other things she enjoys in life–the kind that make her feel human, like reading books and writing novels and creating masterful works of art–but looks off into the hazy distance dreaming of “someday” when she’ll have the free time.
The Someday Mom is the kind of mom who believes she will eventually wake up fully rested, unplug from her phone for an entire day, stop allowing all this screen time for the kids, do yoga, and go for early morning jogs and evening walks and eat completely organic every day, always have a spotless home, always have the laundry done and put away, always be patient and loving and perfect towards her family…. someday.
Being a Someday Mom means having very little faith in Right Now Mom. Someday Mom looks at Right Now Mom and tells her, “You’re tired.” Or, “You’re going to be miserable doing this without help.” Or, the one that gets me every time, “You probably have a lot of other things you need to be doing–more important things.” Someday Mom steals the shine away from Right Now Mom every single time she gets the courage to speak up.
Well, not anymore.
I want to be more like Right Now Mom! I want to greet each day with wonder and excitement! When I ask my kids, “What do you want to do today?” I want to share their enthusiasm for finger painting, or park playing, or fort building, or cookie baking, or whatever idea has just fired off in their brains. I want to say “Yes, let’s do it!” more. I want to encourage creativity and adventure and being present more. I want to live in the moment, every day–not just someday.
Someday Mom will try to bully Right Now Mom out of commission by making the statement that “it will be easier to do all that when they’re older.” It may be true, sure. But what I know is absolutely true, because I’ve experienced it with my eldest child {and it’s the number one thing every mom told me about having kids}, is that they grow up so fast--too fast. These years will be gone in a second and all you’ll wish for later in life is that you could bring them back. “Someday” might be too late.
By the time we get to “someday,” they might be too old for rides in the wagon the park, or back porch finger painting, or they might be too cool for baking cookies with mom on a Friday night. The time for all of the togetherness, whatever mess and chaos might come with it, is right now.
I’ve been a Someday Mom for too long. Today is a perfect day for Someday.