“Is It Hard to Be a Mom?”

This is the question Flora asked me yesterday as she set the table.

“Is it hard to be a mom?” I repeated.

“Yeah.”

I sighed. I hadn’t had the best day. I was noticeably weary when I picked my children up from Dan’s office. Kate had commented on it. “You sound tired,” she said. “I feel tired,” I answered.

“It’s not hard to be a mom,” I said to Flora. “It was harder when you were babies.” I decided to leave it at that.

“Oh, good,” she said. “I think I want to have two children.”

I could’ve said so much more.

Is it hard to me a mom?

It’s not hard to be a mom. It’s a delight to be a mom! If all I had to do was mother, I’d be golden.

What could possibly be hard about being a mom to these two goofballs?

It is hard to be a mom, and be a cook, maid, chauffeur, and disciplinarian. That’s pretty tricky.

It’s hard to be a mom, and work 40 hours outside the home at a job that is unpleasant (at best) and occasionally makes you cry.

It’s hard to be a mom, and still prioritize your marriage in the right way. Being a good wife isn’t about the ’50’s model of a good housewife, but my marriage still has to come first. Part of being a good parent *is* being a good spouse and partner. But sometimes, that’s hard to remember. Sometimes you want to take out your frustrations on the person you’ve joined your life to instead of solving problems with him or her.

Why are you laying down?

It’s hard to be a mom and be a volunteer at school, show up for the activities, cheer from the sidelines, sit through the beginning band concert. It’s hard to be a school mom and fill out the approximately 4,632 forms and turn them in on time. It’s hard to be a mom when you worry if you can re-enroll your children in the school they have come to love and you realize you may need to explore a different option.

It’s hard to be a mom and pay all the bills in an organized fashion.

Because I’m looking for this pen half the time.

It’s hard to be a mom and be patient enough to ask the children again to do the thing you have asked them to do three, five, ten times already. It’s hard to be a mom and repeat the same thing on different days.

It’s hard to be a mom and teach the children to do chores.

it’s hard to be a mom and cobble together dinner every single night. Sometimes you just want to go out for pizza, you know?

It’s hard to be a mom and sweep the kitchen floor at 10 p.m. at night.

It’s hard to be a mom and try to figure out how to launch the next phase of your career, figure out when you are going to write and what, tack hours onto an already too full week so you can move on and earn a little extra scratch.

Being a mom is easier now, now that they are 10 and 8 and 4, and *can* do chores even though they don’t want to, and they can have conversations even though they still goof off at the dinner table, now that they can entertain themselves even if that’s a little more screen time than you originally hoped to expose them to.

I usually like being a mom now. I usually like the mom I am now.

But, yeah, it’s still a little hard being a mom when I mostly want to polish my toenails and sit on the couch reading a book.

It is hard to be a mom (or dad)?