Supergirl In Suburbia: Trying To Be Everything

A few months ago, I changed my thesis topic from writing about trying to be Supergirl to writing about nostalgia and Better Farm.  This was my original intro for that "Supergirl In Suburbia: Trying To Be Everything", about trying to be everything to everyone.  As I'm currently wrapping up grading a bunch of midterm projects, cleaning the dishes from the dinner I made, answering emails for my business, and running the fourth load of laundry on my "day off" from teaching, I thought this was apt.

         An hour ago, I was wrestling tomato sauce out of my daughter Riley’s hair as she moaned in protest, while her sister Ella danced in the shower, slippery with baby soap she kept squeezing out despite my pleas not to.  My arms were soaked, and my tee-shirt was wetter than a co-ed’s at a wet-tee-shirt contest, and bore the telltale stains of a hastily thrown together pasta and salad meal I crafted after a rushed grocery shop.  The kids were both singing at the top of their lungs- some song about flushing a bumblebee down the toilet- and in the other room, I could hear the television blasting a football game.            
         Second-hand Gucci high heels stuck out of the “random crap” basket beneath the key holder, strewn where I had thrown them in my rush after work to get the girls into bathing suits for mommy-and-me swim time. The laptop sat open on the end table, unread emails for the acting studios I own steadily growing in one window, while unfinished lesson plans for the week peeked out from the tab behind them, mocking me for taking on a full-time teaching schedule this year.  Dinner dishes piled in the sink, complete with sauce and cucumber seeds dripping down the sides, and chips from where they had been banged in my haste.  The dishwasher hummed beside it, sloshing water over the plates I ran out of time to do yesterday. The dogs were licking the floor, devouring that which the children dropped on the fake brick linoleum, and my husband clicked away on his computer in the dining room, putting the final touches on his page for his new real estate firm- the first “adult” job he’s had because of the debilitating shoulder injuries and surgeries he has endured over the last decade.

            It was a messy disaster, and as I yanked the brush through my daughter’s rambunctious curls, I couldn’t help but think about a quote I read about a year ago, by Courtney Martin: “We are the daughters of the feminists who said, ‘You can be anything,’ and we heard ’You have to be everything’.”  I hadn’t thought of it until then, this idea that women my age, the “Generation Y” or “X” or something in between, are compelled by history and fate to want to live up to lofty expectations that no human being can possibly fulfill.  We feel guilty if we aren’t working and using our hard-won college educations.  We feel guiltier still if we can’t earn even higher degrees of Masters or PhD’s. 

            Yet we also want to fulfill that biological desire to pass along our genes and mold our children, fighting through childbirth and the aftermath, breastfeeding and pumping while going back to work at two months because, let’s face it, if we don’t, someone will think we’re “weak.”  And heaven help us if we haven’t dyed our greying hair, plucked our migrating eyebrows, or pumped our feet into high heels developed by someone with a less than rudimentary knowledge of the laws of physics, gravity, and comfort.  We also have to find our Prince (or Princess) Charming, whip up a perfect vegetarian, gluten-free lasagna, and make it all look effortless: Donna Reed, with the fierceness of Gloria Steinham, the toughness of Rosie the Riveter, the looks of Sophia Vargera, and the craftiness of Martha Stewart.          

            What I didn’t know, and what I would come to find out in my thirties, is that this whole “having it all” thing, is bullshit.  My friends jokingly call me “Supergirl” and while I admit that my superpower to grow humans is impressive, it’s damn near impossible to be a woman who works full time, runs a successful business, is there all the time for her kids, attends their functions, drives her environmentally friendly Subaru, looks gorgeous (or at least girl-next-door pretty) doing it, and still is able to carve out some time for herself.  Frankly, it’s exhausting to try.  But try we do.  And succeed?  Well, there’s the ongoing battle that we fight every day.

            First, there’s a veneer- what others see.  It’s on our social media sites that only show our smiling children, the perfect little dresses, and the angelic smiles.  It’s that right now, I’m sitting on the leather couch in my living room, surrounded by antique furniture, shelves filled with books, and listening to the cicadas outside. The end-of-summer air is humid outside, but here, with the glow of the lamp beside me, it’s cool and climate controlled.  There’s a fireplace, original hardwood from the 1890’s, and Anderson windows that match the era of my 19^th Century colonial, even if their glass is modern double-pane to keep out the traffic noise.  My children are sleeping cherubs upstairs, snuggled with Disney blankets and Pixar stuffed animals.  It would seem, to the outside observer, to be perfection.

            Except it’s not.  To get here, I went through insomnia and palpitations, waking up in the middle of the night with my chest tight and my breathing erratic.  There was the day during the move when I ended up in bed sipping apple juice, begging through tears to have someone else watch the kids so they didn’t see Mommy like this, and finally taking prescription Xanax to calm my shaking and sooth my numb limbs.  There was a morning at work that I had another teacher watch my class because I needed to get out of the room that was closing in on me, when I walked to the nurse’s office steadily counting backwards from 300 by 3’s, trying whatever I could to stymy the panic attack that gripped me.  There were the arguments over my husband doing too much physical labor during the move, when his shoulder gave out, and I would find myself on the wrong end of a pile of dishes/laundry/finances, pushing him in his training for a new job while I struggled to hold down three, and the nights of being short with my children, limiting our play time so we could get the house ready for sale.

            On social media, occasionally, we throw in the image of our children after they’ve given themselves blue magic marker fu-man-chus or covered themselves in Vaseline.  But for the most part, we stick to what is safe.  When I fell down the stairs and broke my daughter’s leg in the process, it didn’t make my Facebook feed.  Neither did any of the arguments my husband and I have ever had, or the hours of dressing his wounds and pic line after his 8^th shoulder surgery caused a massive infection, or the tense moments at work, or arguments with business partners.  Those were the times I put the phone down, when I cut off social media in favor of isolated depression.

            Yet we’re all in this together.  The more moms I talk to, the more women my age I ask, the more stories like mine I hear: Type A women driven to be their best, excel at their jobs, at motherhood and wifedom, and constantly feeling like they come up short in at least one of the above.  It’s the thing we don’t talk about, or when we do, it’s in whispers in psychologists’ offices, or in jest over a bottle of wine.  In my case, part of this is based on upbringing, but part of it is also based on society- what is expected, what pressures we put on ourselves, and how the hell do we reconcile being everything- wife, mother, career woman, and ourselves- all at once?