Note to Nick and Toni: Mutants, this is for your 15-year-old selves. Or probably 13 (or 14).
NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA – I love my children but there are moments when I just want to smack them and respond to their cries with an eardrum-breaking scream.
Nicholas and Antoinette, you’ll read this sometime in the near future I am sure. You are smart kids so I know you will figure out this site. I love you very much but honey, let me just spill the beans here when I lost my cool after you peed on my pants while the plane was about to take off or when you made me run after you in a crazy airport as your Dad was claiming our four huge suitcases among an army of people who are all in a hurry.
So… You’re not cool when these things happen. I don’t like it. Dragging you around – your 14-month old selves – with more than six bags in tow is my greatest sacrifice as of 27 September 2014; not my pregnancy actually (and you know how much work that was) but THIS – this 22-day trip that brought us around the United States of America.
You see, before you made my life crazy, I always travelled alone – with a backpack. It was so much fun! I would go anywhere I want to go with no particular itinerary. I didn’t care if I had enough clothes, I can always buy a shirt, a sundress or a pair of shorts at a local department store. Travelling was a breeze. It didn’t matter if I have to travel for hours and hours to get to my next destination in a cramped bus with a busted airconditioning unit. It was all part of the “adventure”.
Then your Dad came along. What he did to woe me is a story of it’s own. I’m trying to put together more than 300 letters (and it’s still growing) that he wrote to me but I still can’t find the time because I am too lazy to do it.
So…you’re Dad came along and you followed. You’re my dream come true. I prayed for you but I didn’t realize that wanting you means truckload of diapers. I have never loved somebody so much that I submitted myself to a daily grind of wiping dirty bottoms.
I’m an imbecile when it comes to household chores. I can cook – you should know this by now – but I abhor washing dishes. I hate it so much. So you can just imagine how much effort it took me to motivate myself to wash your milk bottles. I told your Dad I think of cheerleaders doing cartwheels and lifts just to cheer me on to remove stubborn milk residue from the 12 bottles I have to wash everyday at the minimum. You have no idea how much physical mess you create every single day. It’s crazy! Your Dad is disgusted with that thing that comes out of your noses. Drippy nose and Daddy don’t go too well. For us (especially for me) to do all these is a big leap. I think this is really love. Ha!
There are so many little things that I took for granted when I was single and childless. Sleep is one of them. Your screams are annoying. I would have thrown you out of the window but you don’t have capes or built-in trackers that will allow you to fly back to me. If I throw you out of the window, we know what will happen to you. It’s not pretty. I don’t fancy being reported in the news as a criminal. My eyeliner can’t take that.
I don’t like travelling with you now; you’re 14 months old. You’re cute but most of the time, you’re very demanding and insensitive. I get it, you’re young and innocent but sometimes, make that a lot of times, you’re too much to handle.
But… I love you. There’s that. And I just feel that even if you’re demanding, insensitive,and annoying, inside you are fragments of me staring back at me with huge grins on their faces: “Now you know how much work Maria Elena put into you to straighten you up.” Your grandmother, your Lola, once told me that I will only understand the real essence of Motherhood when I become a mother myself. I revolted when she said that. Stupid, single-minded me. I should make a statue of my Mom for everything she has done for me, your Aunt Stephanie, and your Uncles Hendrix and Kevin. I don’t expect you to say the same for me because I don’t even come close to the kind of mother that my Mom is. But… It’ll be nice if one day you’ll say that you would buy a figurine from China that looked just like me. Or maybe a poster of Mulan. I think I look like her or maybe she looks like me. Yes, you can laugh now and call your Mother silly.
So when you’re 15 and your raging hormones are telling you to hate me because I’m not giving you the car keys, read this entry again. Hopefully, you’ll get what I am rambling about.
If not, you can always come to me and ask me questions.
