The Perfect Mother

by Aimee Molloy

It’s no wonder I eventually started loathing them. Really, who can stand to listen to that level of certainty?

My own stomach was already as flat and taut as it had been before I got pregnant. I can thank my mother for that. Good genes—that’s what people have always said about me. They’re talking about the fact that I am tall and thin, that I have a nearly symmetrical face. What they are not talking about are the other genes I’ve inherited. The ones bestowed to me not by my equally symmetrical mother, but from my exceptionally bipolar dad.

Bad things happen in heat like this.

In fact, the US is the only country besides Papua New Guinea that doesn’t mandate paid leave. The United States. The country of family values.”

“Why does everybody like to tell new mothers what we’re about to gain? Why does nobody want to talk about what we have to lose?”

Yeah, like she never really knew how to just be herself. She was always shape-shifting, trying to be what she thought others wanted her to be. Trying to portray whatever image it was that served the situation.

Some want it to happen. Some wish it would happen. Some make it happen.

Emotionally, spiritually: that I know. I was in hell. Lost. Tortured. Having no idea how to get through this. How to handle it. The overwhelming sadness. The failure. The guilt of being such an imperfect mother.

I will not, I promised, be one of those mothers. I won’t read all of the books. Stress out about phthalates in my shampoo, pesticides in my creamer. BPA in my takeout Chinese container. I won’t ever, not once, stand in the grocery store, talking loudly to my child, hoping everyone hears how understanding I am, how close we are, as if parenting is a fucking piece of performance art. I won’t become a different person.