Motherhood is definitely not for the modest. If you don’t like being interrupted while you are taking a shower, or aren’t the kind of person who can hold a conversation while you are in the midst of a bowel movement – you might want to forego having children altogether. Seriously. That may seem a bit extreme, but the truth is that privacy is a thing of the past once you become a mother.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they come from your body. But once they do, they seem to have no idea that your body belongs to you. Even an infant and a baby tend to be constantly groping their mother – whether it be the soft skin above your breast, or your ear lobe. As they get older, they have no qualms with sticking their hands up your shirt while you are standing in line at the bank. And going to the bathroom sets off a silent alarm that only a child can hear, which has them bolting through the bathroom door at the precise moment when you are ready to wipe your own butt for once. Funny thing is, try as you may to send them away – and no matter how times you tell them they will need to give you a few minutes, they will not leave. Apparently, there is something so incredibly interesting going on in the bathroom that they would rather be in there with you, than anywhere else in the house.
The older they get the worse it gets. For the first 4 to 5 years of their young life, they have walked in on you at every worst moment possible. They have followed you into every department store bathroom stall, and have wondered out loud things like, “Why is your pee red mommy,” or said, “Mommy are you pooping,” precisely loud enough for everyone in the bathroom to hear.
Even though they have hopped in the shower with you a hundred times over, they still wonder about your pubic hair each and every time, which somehow totally ruins the whole “relaxing in the shower” experience. And no matter where you hide your vibrator or sex handbook – the kids will somehow find it on the night that you are hosting a dinner party for your friends from church! “Hey mama, look what I found in your dresser,” they will blurt out as they run through the living room.
And as they grow up, their lack of respect for your modesty only continues. But now, along with seeing you in precarious situations – they are also laughing at you and calling you fat. Suddenly, they notice your stretch marks or think that you have the ugliest boobs on the planet. They might even ask you about why you have a pimple on your butt and say something like, “Oh mama, that’s GROSS!” Well then. If it’s so gross, then why do they keep coming back?
Kiddar (the technical term for kid radar) also seems to be set to the frequency to know when mommy and daddy want some private time for romance. Every mother’s worst nightmare is that their child will walk into the bedroom at the precise moment of orgasm and wonder what in the world the two of you are doing. Then, the next day they will try to explain what they saw to a teacher at school, grandma or some perfect stranger at the gas station. As if making time to have sex with your spouse wasn’t hard enough already, right?
Add a few years, and the privacy becomes more than just an invasion of modesty. Suddenly, they are listening to you talk on the phone. They can read now too, so they sit behind you while you type emails and pay bills just to be overly nosey. They might even be checking your text messages or reading your Facebook.
And then there are the questions. From the time they can talk to the time they have moved out of the house, children invade a mother’s privacy with questions. And ‘because I said so,” or “I don’t know,” are just never good enough answers. They pry constantly thinking that it is somehow their right to know every single detail about your life. They want to know what you were like when you were a kid, when the first time you had sex was and if you have ever smoked marijuana. They want to know who you were talking to all the time and place demands to know what it is you did all day while they were at school. And then, if you don’t answer them in the manner of full disclosure with which they feel they deserve – they will walk in on you with your pants down while you are peeing.
No one said the life of a mother was easy. And no one told you how extremely precious anything private would become either. The truth is that once you become a mother, you somehow sign some mysterious agreement that essentially voids you of having any type of life that is your own. And while annoying, there is a good chance that you wouldn’t have it any other way.