Are you one of those active Facebook moms? Is the virtual life of such mothers very different from the real one!
I often rant too much about all the dirty dishes and the piles of unlimited laundry. And, then I have a husband who is in love with the color white. His entire wardrobe is full of whites. So, that sort of explains why I pay too much attention to all those TV commercials that sell detergents and whiteners. That’s not all! My husband and I have also created a beautiful creature we call Brat H. A toddler (now), he is absolutely in love with his new discovery- “the tiny feet”. And while Harshal (Brat H) is busy pretending to be an explorer, he has also developed an interesting hobby- of scratching the walls. It’s disgusting!! If you interrupt him during the course of this activity, then you are in for some trouble. If that happens, be prepared to undergo a session of high-level torture. It can last for 5 minutes to say half an hour? The session primarily comprises of (i) him throwing his hands around like an ape of the jungle; (ii) this shall be accompanied by a sudden shriek which will travel around the house at a speed faster than the bullet; (iii) his head will go to-and-fro (in an uncontrollable, oscillating motion).
At that moment and I swear I dream of running away.
At that moment, I feel like throwing the dishes away in a swinging motion. At my husband who shines brighter than the god’s white cape. At that moment, I feel like setting all the laundry on fire.
I am a Facebook mom and if you are my Facebook friend, you might not have known how (and often) do I feel. Chances are- you wouldn’t ever know it at all (unless you are following my blog). It’s because, we, the parents have an awesome (read uncanny) ability of concealing our lives. Our FB walls are full of happy faces and proud moments. That’s very typical of Facebook moms! In reality, our actual house walls are filled with colorful crayon sketches of funny mum-dad portraits (a stick for a body, 2 shorter sticks emerging from the boob-y area and 2 even shorter ones pointing towards “Mother Earth”, with a circle for a face and two tiny dots of our eyes). Funny? Indeed!
But, that’s real, both the worlds are real for that matter. We end up capturing smiles which get pinned on the virtual wall while the frustrating moments get pinned on our refrigerators and kitchen cabinets- as the gentle reminders. “While I am away, don’t let Brat H get away with a missed meal”, “Please put that jar away before Brat H gets his hands on it too”..
Mommas- I frankly don’t know when my makeup expired. I don’t get time to put it on anymore. I also don’t know when was the last time my hair looked nice and smelled heavenly. But, yes, I am busy making memories with my little one. I am busy capturing our precious family moments. Even though, at times, it gets impossible to take pictures cause he makes it a tough task. However, I promise, that in those shots, you won’t see our frustrating moments. Instead, you will see smiles and smiles..
A life without a red pout is far far better than that in which there is no laundry to do, no dishes to wash, no walls to clean, and no mess to clear! You may differ 😉
This post has been inspired by Taylor Della-Coletta’s post “My Facebook is full of lies”.
I have been there wanting to throw away the dirty dishes suffering from the discomfort of too much of work, then realising that the dish in hand is a piece of crockery and throwing away is only going to mean more work picking up the broken pieces. When I was mothering in the toddler and pre-schooler phase, I used to share lots of posts and pictures from Simply real mom and Crappy parenting because those spoke out my frustration. Even today, though life is not as tough as earlier, I still share my hardship as a parent on facebook like the one I shared about making my son do his homework. The other side is also true and I completely agree with you – Life also offers smiles and there is no harm in pinning those moments to our virtual walls because those are as real as the difficult ones and for us our facebook is an extension of our real selves. What others do is their own business.
Indeed! Anamika.. Life’s smiled deserve a big mention too. I am going through the ‘toddler-pre schooler’ phase as we speak 🙁
More power to you, my friend.
Thanks Anamika <3
This is so so true! In my more frustrating moments I have to actively remind myself that all those ‘perfect’ mothers on Facebook aren’t perfect, they just don’t show their imperfections. After all, none of us want to air our forty laundry on our virtual walls :p
Great post!
Oh!Yes..
Brilliant! There is a message for every parent and Iam sure not only parents but everybody who reads it will be left thinking.. where are we heading.. life full of lies .. running away from reality.. hide it or show it .. I say there are fond memories LIVE it!