What "Mommy" Means to Me

Mommy was not my daughter's first word - "dada" was. Followed by "milk", "more" and a slew of others. "Mama" would come months later. It was as if my daughter was purposefully withholding bestowing the title on me. But whether the only human who really had the right to call me Mommy called me that or not, the world pinned the title on my chest before she was even born. 

Heather Havrilesky is right. Mommy is a label that the world now defines you by. But I disagree with her assessment that "becoming a mother doesn’t change you so much as violently refurbish you, even though you’re still the same underneath it all." It didn't just change me to the outside world. It changed me at the core.

At first, it seemed almost surface. Like waking up in a new dimension. The world around you has completely changed but you are the same person you were the day before - or you think so at least. But now your brain is full of random facts and figures you didn't even know existed. You're obsessed with basic human functions on a level you could never have imagined. And your party conversations, on those rare occasions where you find yourself at a party, are strikingly different. 

I remember attending a birthday party at a beautiful house at the top of a hill. Waiters passed h'ourderves, roulette and blackjack tables were set up outside. My husband had a drink in one hand and cards in the other. I wandered around with a baby strapped to my chest and found myself sucked into a conversation about another child's bowel movements. I nodded politely, sympathetically, but inside I was screaming. Is this really the new dimension I live in? Is this what my life is going to be? Not long after I left to go breastfeed in the backseat of my car and cried over the loss of adult conversation. 

The concept of being a mommy felt alien to me. To be lumped into this group made me question who I was and who I would be going forward. But as sleep deprivation loosened its grip and my daughter uttered the word "mommy" for the first time, I started to appreciate it as well. I am someone's mommy. I feel it intensely when I look at my daughter in dance class or when she's not feeling well. Being a mommy has brought joy into my life that I couldn't have comprehended before. 

It's changed me and even thought my daughter is now two years-old, I'll be honest, I haven't quite figured out who I am now beyond being a mom. Being a mom has seeped into every part of my life - my job, my sleeping patterns, the way I eat. I can't compartmentalize it. Like Havrilesky said "as we’ve learned to treat children as people with desires and rights of their own, we’ve stopped treating ourselves and one another as such."  

She's right. And more so than the world doing it to me, I've done it to myself. I've stopped thinking about my own rights and desires and myself as a human being and a person individually and not connected to my kid, my husband or my job. 

My "Mommy Problem" is that becoming a mommy has both given me a new identity and stripped me of one at the same time.

I have never wanted to follow the yellow brick road.

Munchkins, ruby red slippers, the great and all powerful Oz...the whole thing has always creeped me out. I don't know what it is exactly but it just has. This made it all the more surprising when at my baby shower my father handed me his gift. It was one of those framed memorabilia pieces you'd buy at a collector's store -a framed signed photo of the munchkins. He looked at me - so happy, while my inner voice screamed in terror. 

There was no way this was going on the nursery wall. There was no way this was coming in my house at all. The worst part was that this probably wasn't cheap. Despite the fact that it was the last thing I would ever hang on my wall this could very well be someone else's prize possession. I couldn't stick it in the back of the closet and ignore it. So I did what someone who was never taught how to accept a gift graciously does - I told my dad he needed to take it back. Oh, and in the process broke his heart.

What I didn't know was that one of my dad's dreams was to introduce his grandchildren to Wizard of Oz. How was I to know this? I don't ever actually remember watching Wizard of Oz with my father. Or with anyone actually. Maybe I was so traumatized I blocked it out of my mind. But this insight into my dad's vision of being a grandfather, well...it made me feel like a pretty shitty daughter. That said, I still made him take it back. I can't be haunted every day just out of guilt.  

So now that you know about my one of my greatest fears let me share you something I recently discovered on the internet. 

 

Seriously, how creepy is that? Like something straight out of my nightmares. This eerie broken down yellow brick road actually exists and leads to a now abandoned amusement park in North Carolina called Land of Oz. The park has been closed since the 1980s, but it opens once a year for an Autumn for Oz party that anyone can go to. You can also stay overnight at Dorothy's house if you dare. Personally that's right up there with the Cabin from Evil Dead for me so I probably wouldn't do it. 

That said, there is something so creepy about it that I kind of want to go. Roadtrippers has some more creepy photos and a video someone took on a visit. 

You can learn more about Land of Oz here.

And yes, I will let my father watch Wizard of Oz with my daughter if he really wants to. I don't need to pass my baggage on to her. I'm sure she will have plenty of her own.