Motherhood requires skills you never knew you had (or wanted)–breastfeeding, breast-pumping, pulling all-nighters, changing diapers, cleaning up-the-back poops, lightning fast crib-sheet changes, installing car seats, cleaning barf off of car seats, toy and furniture assembly, mind-reading (Tired? Hungry? About to pee your pants?), math tutoring, sport coaching, dispute mediating, and… ACTING!
When my first daughter was a newborn and I was struggling to nurse her, I confided in the hospital lactation consultant: “I am almost afraid to admit this, but I don’t have that new baby bliss. I am sad in all my happy places and so, so so tired.” The LC put her hand on my shoulder (this was a huge improvement over where she usually had her hand) and said: “You’re not the only one. You just have to fake it ‘til you make it.”
Those words resonated with me deeply. I realized that mommies can’t always wear their hearts on the their sleeves because someone else’s heart, needs, and fears have to come first. These little creatures quickly and for very a long time determine when we wake up, clean up, and suck it up. 
It is important to me that my daughters eat a healthy diet and have a healthy body image. My natural inclinations tend toward neither. My mother insisted fish was “brain food,” but I never understood the appeal of eating something about which the highest compliment was it didn’t take like itself. (“It’s not even fishy fish!”) Yet, once or twice a week you will find me choking down salmon, or sole, or halibut with a heap of quinoa or couscous saying: “Isn’t it yummy?” I spent years swimming in baggy t-shirts over bathing suits, but now I hold my head high, my stomach in, and pray that ruching really works.
Everyone in New York has had a run-in or seven with the small gray furries, and I do not mean chinchillas. One particularly wily Mickey found his back paws on a glue trap, but crawled forward to the freakishly large but adorable foot belonging to 3-year-old Sloane. “Ooh!” she cried in the cutest little voice. “It’s stuck.” I summoned my inner Meryl Streep, smiled at my sweet girl and said: “No problem.” I calmly reached down, yanked that trap hard and fast off her tender tootsies, and speed-walked to the bathroom where I threw the trap in the toilet and closed the bowl. Seconds later my hand was shaking so badly I could barely dial the exterminator’s number.
During one endless night of swaddling, shushing, and shuckling with my second daughter Tanys, Queen of Colic, I started singing “Shut the f#%^ up” to the tune of “Rock-a-Bye Baby”(which, when you think about it, has vastly more horrifying lyrics). My husband looked over at me with a mixture of love, pity, and horror I will never forget. “What?” I said. “All she knows is I am smiling and singing in a sweet voice. The words are for me.” Then we giggled, we sighed, and we sang the new version together.
This winter we committed to getting both kids on the slopes as often as possible. True to her Canadian roots, Tanys took to skiing like a duck to water. After a few short days we were comfortably doing greens and blues together; chairlift rides flew by quickly as my chatterbox kept up a running commentary (I now contend her colic was simply a desire to start talking early and often). We were skiing between two chairlifts when a snowboarder wacked me on the back and I went tush over teakettle down the mountain with a surprisingly G-rated, “Whoa!”
The pain in my left knee was, well, interesting. “Mummy are you okay?” “Yes… No… I don’t know. Just stop and wait there for me.” A very nice and very cute snowboarder came to apologize for his species and sent his friends down to wait with Tanys. Ski Patrol was called, Tanys climbed back up to me, and soon the sled arrived and took both of us down the mountain. Throughout, I was less worried about the injury and more concerned that Tanys’s budding love of skiing was forever nipped, so I kept the kvetching to a minimum. I had the usual rest, ice, compression, elevation, MRI, yadda, yadda, yadda… I am scheduled for an ACL reconstruction in less than 2 weeks. Last weekend both kids kissed my knee and trotted right back to the mountain without a second thought.
All this is not to say that we cannot or do not show our children our faults and vulnerabilities. It doesn’t take long for them to figure out their parents aren’t perfect, so there is little point in pretending. The important thing is to lean in and push through your own weaknesses, phobias, and quirks as you talk them off the ledges of their own tempers and temperaments. We also have to protect their innocence (“I’m so happy you like Daddy’s new girlfriend,” when the girlfriend in question is reason Daddy doesn’t live at home anymore), respect their emotional maturity (“Of course the goldfish always had that black stripe, sweetie”), and tell the odd, saving white lie (“No one will notice you cut your own hair”).
So, somewhere along the way, I really did become a bug-killing, early-rising, fish-eating, bathing suit-wearing, high pain tolerance-having woman and I kinda dig it (okay except for the early-rising bit). Maybe the secret to getting your shiz together is pretending you have it together for a vulnerable, loving audience who is expecting great things of you. It’s on us to rise to their expectations… and nightmares, night terrors, requests for water, and demands for breakfast. So take your bows, try not to trip on your gowns/robes, and remember that even if you don’t get the gold statue, it’s an honor just to be nominated.
Lani Serota is the mother of two girls, besotted wife, sleep aficionado (both her own and that of children), and celebrity child name enthusiast who loves a good giggle. When she is not working, taking advantage of everything New York City has to offer, or procrastinating, she loves to write. Lani lives with her husband and daughters on the Upper East Side.
