"The Mommy Store"

After all we suffer through and all we serve, with our nerves of steel and our endless hours, you'd think it would take something huge and horrible to break a mother's heart. But really, it's something so small, so tiny, so simple that can crack us in two and make us bleed endlessly.

This morning I was having a tougher time than usual wrangling the 2 year old into her day clothes. She prefers nudity. Go figure. While I was dressing her, I decided to play a little toddler psychology and ask her if she had a nice mommy or a mean mommy. Usually the kids will stop their naughtiness and say they have a nice mommy and then decide to be nice to their nice mommy. Today, however, Bianca grinned devilishly and screamed, "MEAN MOMMY!" in my face. "MEANIE MEANER MEAN MOMMY!" Oh. Ok. Gosh. What did I do to deserve that? I took off her wet, cold, stinky pee-pee night diaper that she didn't want to let go of. That qualifies me as mean, in her 2 year old mind.

So I pressed it a bit farther and grinned back at her and asked, "If you mommy is so mean, why don't you go to the Mommy Store and buy a NEW mommy???" She giggled and relented and we continued on with the morning rituals.

At breakfast I told her that we were going to the gym so she could play with children while Mommy exercises. While munching her cheerios she looked up at me and asked with genuine curiosity, "When we leave the gym can we go to the Mommy Store and pick out a mommy?"

I know it was just a new concept, a curiosity of a toddler's mind. It wasn't that she doesn't love me or that she really thinks I'm a mean mommy. It was just so new and novel, to think, A Mommy Store! and nobody had ever told her about that before. Wow... we gotta check this out as soon as possible.

But to me, in my fragile state of a new morning and a foggy mind, it was a dagger to the heart. I ducked around the corner and cried quietly, half hoping she'd find me, but glad that she kept on munching her cheerios and sipping her milk cup. She wouldn't understand why mommy was crying anyway, and maybe it was silly that I did.

...even sillier to post this for all the world to see just how fragile this mommy's heart really is.