As a mom at home I’m used to having little hands and noses wiped on me ALL day!
So often I’ll find a bit of paint or smudge of peanut butter sandwich on one or other part of my clothing.
It’s a mom thing right ?
So, yesterday morning I’m rushing to get out the door to attend an event by 8am.
As usual I always leave the house and Hamish ready for the day before I go anywhere. It’s a habit.
Getting ready
I neatened the house. Made everyone morning coffees and teas. Prepared Hamish a breakfast and a snack box and opened his playdough for him to play with while I ran upstairs and got dressed.
Slipping into my long mustard dress I felt good. Often too few adult outings in a week, leave me feeling like old mother Hubbard but here I stood flashing my inner diva.
Checked the hair, added a dash of colour to my lips and I was ready to go.
Time to play
I went downstairs and waited for Brent to come down.
Hamish was building red playdough characters and I stooped down to help him add some ears and legs to his oddly shaped giraffe.
Here’s where I made my first mistake. I gave him the playdough from a brand that’s a little too sticky and tends to leave itself EVERYWHERE!
Off I go
At last Brent was ready and I kissed Hamish who by now had hugged me a hundred times, before leaving him to play with his older sister.
And I was off to enjoy a breakfast event at the gorgeous Durbanville Hills wine estate.
My confidence was high. I felt good and I think I looked good. Ready to spend some adult time away from playdough and Lego and toy cars.
Diva in a mustard dress
I walked my way around the room, introducing myself and prided myself with my dress choice …
and then I looked down!
I wanted to die!
Could the floor just swallow me up already!
There on my beautiful Mustard hued dress were the teeniest tiniest fingerprints of smudged red playdough.
I was horrified.
How many people had seen my newly patterned dress. Could I just sit and hide throughout the rest of the event.
How had I missed it?
Self concious
And so there I sat in my self conscious thoughts when the one speaker spoke about breaking the “supermom” concepts.
And I listened to her words and realised there I was worrying about how I would be judged by others but forgetting what those little red stains meant.
You see, my imperfect dress reflected me so much more authentically than any words I uttered that morning.
They represented the part of me that holds my heart …I am a mom!
Red stains
That means that regardless of what the world demands of me there are little hands that need me more. Those stains reflect my heart, they show that little arms hugged me before I left and show that I wasn’t too busy to stop and play.
A mark of love
Somewhere, in the silence of my thoughts, my mind became aware that each mark was a stain of love.
Somewhere I stopped worrying about the judgement of the women around me. I stopped obsessing about the marks that were so small I’m sure very few people noticed and somewhere a calm peace fell over me as I acknowledged that each little fingerprint stain in their perfect imperfection show the world that a little boy happily wiped his hands all over his mothers dress not to clean his hands but because he loved her so much he wanted to stop his play to give her a hug.
