Who, Me? Me, Who?

"The birth of children...the death of self?!?" I'm sure I heard those words muttered by some anxious parent balancing baby screaming, reaching for toddler ripping open goldfish cracker bags with one fist and clearing the rest of the ritz packages from their rightful place on the shelf, and using her ankle to secure her automobile-sized purse from tumbling all the way to the ground (only the tampons managed to make it to freedom) as I wandered grocery store aisles in a relaxed, pre-parent state admiring all the items I could then luxuriously afford.

'Death to self' a somewhat dramatic take perhaps, but some days I wonder who that pre-mom me was...what did I used to enjoy? What do I like to do now? (Is singing "Wheels on the Bus" forty-five times without strangling anyone a true feat to brag of or a pathetic boast not worthy of resume status?) Who was I? Who am I now? Oh the philosophical pondering...Does anyone, anyone at all, get it? I'm sure I can't be alone.

I mean no disrespect to my mostly-adorable children when I question the depths of my soul, and struggle with the fact that I never, ever seem to complete anything...are novels really not meant to take three years to read? Is it honestly possible to clean more than a quarter of the countertop in one attempt? And does it all really matter anyways?

I hope my children recall the mom who let them paint every part of her body that wasn't covered in clothing; the woman who assisted them in picking pumpkins to resemble every member of our family including our two cats and then spent hours over several days under their "supervision" gluing bits of felt to represent eyes, eyelashes, noses, ears; and the mother who, when they were sick in the middle of the winter, set up a kiddie pool in the kitchen and let them go splashy wild...and not the mom who loudly sighs in frustration when she can't get a one-line email to a work colleague finished or sent; or the woman who yelled inappropriately when only one breakfast bite from her own toast was ingested before the entire contents of the milk jug ended up on the floor beside her coffee and broken mug; or the mother who complains of her desire to just simply go to the washroom without background screeching, near-bone-breaking, bloodcurdling yelps and intense sibling-induced bruising...

Me, who? It may sound a tragic tale of misery and lost searching but in many ways it is an exhilarating and mysterious process...I change the me I know every day. Why not jump in puddles? Why not run through sprinklers? Why not try to finish an entire book annually? Why not balance screaming baby, heroically rip goldfish from toddler reach, and why not just let those tampons scatter themselves about the sticky floor? After all they make super microphones and there's nothing quite so rousing as a grocery store karaoke rendition of Aretha's "Respect"...