Pooped: An Essay on Motherhood

*This is a draft of an essay for my English class-I would appreciate any feedback anyone has to offer to improve it.*

I polished the bathroom mirror, happily ruminating on the fleeting joys of domesticity: the shining faucet, the laughter of the baby splashing in the tub behind me, the smell of fresh laundry coming from the dryer. And then it hit me.
I mean, it really hit me. It hit me in the back of the leg.
Poop. I turned to return the toy to the tub, only to find that my one-year-old had been playing with a substance far more interesting than sponge letters. I hastily pulled the plug, pondering the best way to clean the slightly smeared baby and the tub at the same time, when the unthinkable happened. He started to move his hands to his mouth. Realizing I could not wait for the tub to empty, I then did the unthinkable; I reached in with my bare hands and started to pull out the floating contents of the tub and my baby’s hands, throwing them in the toilet in a race to keep them from becoming his afternoon snack.

Now, I am not a new mother. Jack is my fourth child, so this was not the first time I have dealt with bath time poop (although, as with every occurrence, I fervently hope it is the last). But each time it leaves me wondering, “How on earth did I get myself into this?” I wasn’t always a stay-at-home mom. There was a time, now glamorized by the distance of years, when I left each morning for a challenging job where I felt rewarded and appreciated. Still, I fervently wished that I could be home with my children instead of leaving them to “daddy daycare”. I dreamed of leading and guiding the perfect family in a perfectly clean home, sitting down together to perfectly balanced dinners, a prelude to perfectly blissful bath times, and perfect bedtime stories. It was going to be: perfect!

Which leads me to reality: scooping “pebble poop” from the bathtub in frenzy, racing from breakfasttocarpooltoPTAtocarpooltopackmeetingtosoccer practicetohomeworktodinnertobedtimetomyhomeworktothrowaloadoflaundry insowehavecleansocks forschooltocollapseinbedexhaustedsowecando itallagaintomorrow. Our perfectly balanced dinner is frequently Hamburger Helper, if not cereal, and the perfect bedtime story often goes as follows: “There were once some children who didn’t go to bed when they were told, so their mother (the evil witch) threatened them with grounding, extra chores, and sleeping in the bathtub if they didn’t stop playing and go to sleep THIS INSTANT BECAUSE YOU HAVE SCHOOL IN THE MORNING AND I AM DONE BEING MOM TONIGHT BECAUSE I AM TIRED!”

The funny thing is, this is actually the sound of perfect bliss. Surprised? I’m not really complaining. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy my old job; I frequently miss tasks that stay completed when they are done, lunch breaks, office gossip, and especially paychecks. I really do. But I also remember all the “crap” that went along with being a working mom: missing sleepy-eyed children at breakfast and wide eyed children in school programs, leaving behind the camaraderie of a family dinner for a 12-hour shift, closing the door on a small child lifting their arms to be picked up, and propping the phone on my shoulder so I could work while I listened to excited calls about lost teeth, found kittens, going to the potty, and the miracle of the garbage truck (high entertainment to a two-year-old). It was all pseudo-motherhood to me, missing most of the little moments that really make up a childhood: the owies and questions and snotty kisses and even the poop in the bathtub.

Finally, I have an epiphany. The chaos has settled and Jack is warm in my arms in his footie pajamas, the top of his head still wet and fragrant from his (second) bath. For one rare moment, he is still in my arms, his breathing slows and my head falls onto his as we drift off to sleep.

We are pooped. But this is the poop I chose.