I am the mother of 3 children. Yes ... I know ... quite shocking, isn't it? Frankly, I think I'm a pretty decent one ... albeit slightly unconventional .... still I'd give myself a solid B+ on most days. As I'm sure most of you mothers who are reading this know .... raising children with an abundance of love, structure, discipline and fun is a precarious balancing act. I adore my children and honestly don't know where I would be in my life without them .... but .... it took me years to utter these soul crushing words out loud ..."my children are simply not enough for me".
Those seemingly benign words destroyed my parental psyche for the entire first few years as a mother. I knew I was 'supposed' to love and adore my children and make them my entire life .... well .... that's what all the movies, books, etc.... said. In reality .... I was slowly losing what was left of my addled mind. I kept this deep, dark secret tucked away in my brain where it grew and eventually manifested itself in entirely self destructive, crazy ways.
Here is one story to illustrate this:
I was the mother of a 26 month old toddler as well as a 5 month old infant and felt like I was drowning in putrid diapers, drool and depression. Out of the blue ... I got an exciting phone call from a girlfriend that was originally from Louisville but had recently relocated to New Orleans ... The Big Easy .... !!
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French Quarter - Bourbon Street ... where insanity reigns
supreme and we were in there somewhere! |
She was looking to put together her own personal Mardi Gras Krue to terrorize the town over a long weekend. You would think that as a responsible, new mother that I would take a look around at the loving, longing smiles of my children and politely decline her invitation. Well ... you would be horrendously wrong because if I could have jumped on a plane that very afternoon ... I would have done it. Instead, I did the next best thing ... I grabbed my girlfriend, Lori ... who was also mother of a 2 year old ... and we made the 10 hour drive to New Orleans a few weeks later much to the shock and dismay of our significant others.
The millisecond we crossed into the state of Louisiana ... I could slowly feel my DNA changing into something exciting and terrifying (you know ... Incredible Hulk style). The closer we drove to the city of New Orleans ... my proper decision making abilities began to fall quickly out the window and tumble out onto the disappearing highway behind me. I tell you this for a fact ... the city of New Orleans has a mystical, magical way of luring you into donning a beautiful mask of impropriety. I have done some of the most embarrassing and elicit acts in New Orleans and all the while believing somehow that they were completely and utterly acceptable in polite society .... which, of course, they were not.
We arrived in New Orleans appropriately at Happy Hour .... which in New Orleans simply means that at any time ... you are physically capable of lifting a glass to your face it is deemed Happy Hour. My friend Genny greeted us in all her excitement in her lovely Garden District apartment. We wasted absolutely no time on pleasantries and immediately began to make good use of the box wine that she had chilling in the fridge. After a few proper glasses of wine .... Genny decided to get a bit randy and mooned me as I was documenting our evening with my newly purchased camera. Lori saw a tiny tattoo on Genny and screamed ... "YOU HAVE A TATTOO???? I want a tattooooooooo!!" Thus began our quest to acquire 'ink' for Lori that evening. But ... not before we downed the entire box of wine and stopped at several pubs on the way to the French Quarter in search of a tattoo parlor.
We stumbled and wandered our way around the French Quarter and finally found 'the place'. It was down a dark alleyway and from what I remember had a number of n'er do wells hanging out around the entrance smoking and swapping stories. We burst into the front door and apparently we had all made the instantaneously brilliant decision to procure matching tattoos. Along the way we had picked up yet another box of wine ... (what in the heck was our obsession with box wine back then??) and decided to share it with everyone in the establishment ... shot style served sans glasses.
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| Yep ... This is pretty much what we were dealing with. |
We finally got down to business and began to get our tattoos. All I remember is a man with long black hair ... who had an eerie resemblance to an Emo-Dracula poking what I hoped was a sterilized, inked-up needle into my pubic bone.
After it was all said and done ... Genny and I walked outside and waited for Lori to finish her session. We encountered one of the many tattoo artists outside who had more piercing perforations in his head and body than clove holes on an Easter ham! I asked if any of them were particularly painful. He resolutely replied ... only 'the Prince Albert'. Trying to act uber cool ... I shrugged it off and nodded in agreement as if I had some inkling as to what the hell he was talking about. Genny, of course, blew our super cool poser cover and said ... 'what the hell's a Prince Albert' .... to which he non-chalantly replied .... "here ... let me just show you ..." and right there and then ... on the streets of New Orleans ... he proceeded to unzip his pants and pull out his wang and show us his 'Prince Albert'.
Genny and I instinctively decided to play it off as if he was showing us a photo of his blue ribbon winning prize pig .... overly complimenting and smiling but at the same time internally screaming in shock and wondering ... why the hell would somebody have one of those! (yeah ... go ahead and google it ... WACKY STUFF I tell you!)
Things had gotten weird ... and in New Orleans .... that is saying a tremendous amount. About that time ... Lori came stumbling out of the tattoo parlor and we quickly ambled down the street in search of a less 'rapey' environment.
It was decided with much fanfare that we should go immediately and without delay to the nearest Walgreens and purchase cherry hair dye in order to festively color each other's hair. Yes ... I know ... sheer brilliance, right?
I'm not sure of the exact occurences that followed this ingenious turn of events .... but the forensic proof the next morning revealed all.
We blearily awoke the next early afternoon ... fully clothed and piled aimlessly on the bed ... wreaking of the insanity from the night before. Against my very skewed better judgment ... I opened my sticky, partially glued shut eyes and through my bone-dry, sand filled mouth uttered the first brilliant words of the morning ...
" .... what the fuck?!?!"
As I began to look around the apartment ... I saw stained handprints on the walls, dried cherry colored drips all over the carpet and what appeared to be a crumpled up human being deposited haphazardly on the floor.
Then ... something jolted me .... a stinging pain on my pelvis. "Ouch!!! ..."
I pulled down my jeans and saw a bright white, surgical-like bandage attached to my hip bone. Oh CRAP!! As the events of the evening began to sickeningly swirl around my brain .... I suddenly heard a croaking sound come out of my throat and I screamed in the general direction of my cohorts .... "OH MY GA ... OH MY GA .... what did we do ... oh no .... tattoos .... what the .... !!! My infinitely handicapped brain was not prepared to adjust to the reality that had abruptly presented itself. My two accomplices wobbled out of bed and immediately looked at their own surgical patch and I watched in slow motion the color physically drain from their already pale, sallow faces.
My mind was crawling over the battered and fragmented exploits of the prior evening .... trying desperately to piece together a timeline .... anything. There were no words .... we were all in a complete and utter stupor. Silently we stood there .... staring at each other and then back at the bandage. We were all simply too terrified ... in the glaring light of day .... to peak under the surgical patch because not one of us could recall what indelible piece of artwork was going to be staring back at us .... for eternity!! My mind was working on overtime replaying the events of the evening and pleading silently that the tattoo wasn't something akin to Yosemite Sam or Elmo .... (no offense to either of those two fine characters)
We all decided to rip off the bandages at once .... 1, 2, 3 ... PULL!!!!!
Looking up at me .... was a dainty red heart with swirling ivy on each side. A collective audible sigh of relief filled the room. I could not have been more elated in my life! We all fell into bed laughing and thanking every God, Saint & Angel in our collective personal religious history that this was the only consequence of our debauched evening.
As we picked ourselves up and began to process and analyze the previous evening's events ... it was decidedly apparent that we were clearly not in any shape to be dying our hair. There was semi-permanent auburn cherry hair dye EVERYWHERE. On the walls, on the floor, in the bathroom, on our clothing, bodies and least of all .... in our hair!
To this day ... I still feel just horrible about Genny's apartment. How she explained all that mess to her landlord and not gotten evicted ... I'll never know.
After a long weekend of indulged revelry .... we eventually began our return home .... minus several thousand brain cells and with the addition of our permanent physical keepsake.
Upon our somewhat personal shameful return home ... we were greeted enthusiastically by our families. Husbands were overjoyed to once again have their wives back to mother their children ... after what I'm sure was a slightly stressful but fully appreciated undertaking on their part.
All was well with the world .... children were gleeful .... homes were filled with the love and laughter of an intact family unit.
I have a permanent reminder of that crazy, lost weekend more than 14 years ago. I look at it often and giggle to myself about what haphazard, delinquents we three were so long ago. I went to New Orleans to have a crazy, fun weekend. To remind myself that even though my title had changed from Tyra to Mommy and Honey .... that I still hadn't lost myself. That I could still be a great mother and wife and still keep what innately made me ... ME! Granted .... in hindsight .... that weekend was probably a bit much of a crazy way to figure that out .... but enlightenment certainly takes on all forms in our lives.
Since that time years ago .... I have made it a point to take at least one 'girl trip' a year. I think it is important to continue to remind ourselves of our youth .... to commune with yourself and with girlfriends to solidify and rekindle relationships .... and frankly .... to just laugh relentlessly aloud and have a good time. It certainly makes me a better Tyra ... Mommy ... and Honey.
