A while ago, I received a local magazine focused on the lives of Dallas moms. I think it was a short-lived foray into the life of motherhood with a super-sized side of Big D advertising in print form. Here’s what I learned about being a real Dallas mom…
I’ve been in Dallas my whole life, and have been a Dallas mom for the past (almost) 18 years. I don’t think I look much like any of the moms in that magazine. I’ve never held my child’s birthday party at an art museum. I’ve never attended a baby shower wearing a $420 pair of pants, and my kids have never jetted with me to Morocco or Egypt.
My D mom day goes something like this…. get up 6AM, take my turn in the shared bathroom so I get a chance before the kids use all the hot water. Cook, clean, yell at the boys to get ready for school, and get myself fed and to work at the gym by 8:15 – where I teach sweaty classes to other D moms who also don’t wear $420 pants. Come home to straighten the house, prepare for dinner, and clean up dog throw up. Haul a giant rug out the back door all by myself after moving a 1000 lb couch and smell checking it for throw up as well.
Run a few loads of laundry, quick-stop at the grocery store because there’s no bread for school lunches tomorrow, all while still wearing the same sweaty clothes that I worked out in that morning. Maybe that’s why I was never asked to be featured in the magazine.
Most Dallas moms I know are doing about the same thing as me…sweating it out at the Y every morning after school drop off, fitting in errands in our free-time while kids are at school, and working – full, part time or volunteer. And making a home – which I believe with all my heart is the hardest work of all.
Y’all, I’m not even sure this magazine is still in print. Maybe they got a lot of sassy feedback from regular issue moms like me. Maybe all us regular moms convinced them they had the whole concept of what’s cool and awesome in this town all wrong.
I actually think we’re the cool ones. The amazing ones. The ones to watch and admire. The ones who have this mom thing under real control because we’ve learned that it’s not nearly about how we look doing it, or where we’re doing it, just the fact that we’re really doing it. Day by day, minute by minute, hands on the wheel of our mom-cars, influencing the outcomes of little lives.
Y’all, I’ll totally take that any day over a $420 pair of pants.
