A Moment (A short play)

Scene:  A windy and warm beach on a tiny, little island on the East Coast.  

Mama is sitting in a beach chair with a glass of wine (duh) and watching her little girl. Baby girl’s bleach-blonde hair is blowing in the breeze, and her tiny arm swipes sand from her forehead as she constructs an intricate sandcastle.

Mama (Me):  Baby girl, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Baby Girl:  I want to be like Mama and do NOTHING.

Mama (to herself):  Ok. Hmmmm….now what might be a rational, mature response to such a statement? She’s 4. She doesn’t know anything- I mean we are talking about a kid that can’t read yet or write the letter P in a forward-facing manner or brush her back teeth or eat anything of any nutritional value (I’m trying) or tie her shoes but oh my god she can’t do any of this stuff because I haven’t taught her properly and now she won’t ever want to be an astronaut or an engineer or an Olympic soccer player because she thinks I do nothing all day except stare at my phone and stress over laundry and cook meals for 6 eaten by none and write a stupid blog with run-on sentences and call Samsung to yell at them about a broken washer AND dryer and hey, I stand for women’s rights- I MARCHED- and I used to stand on stages and sing and become something magical and I married a man who I’m still wildly in love with even when it’s hard and we have 4 beautiful, healthy children and I birthed them all (one with no drugs, thank you) and I studied Shakespeare and Biology and Calculus and taught Pilates and children’s theatre and moved across the world with babies in tow, babies in my belly and I can write in cursive and speak terrible Spanish and I did a commercial once for dandruff shampoo and I love to dance- I used to be a ballet dancer- and I can still do a damn good cartwheel and I devour books like glasses of water in a desert and I love everything about my kids except for a few things that make me crazy but I’m real and I’m truthful and I homeschool them and I hold their hands and their hearts and their too-heavy backpacks and their dirty laundry and their beautiful moments and their painful moments and I put on lipstick and mascara and go on date nights because we all need a date night and I kiss ouchies and cry and laugh hysterically at bad jokes and sing too loudly to songs they don’t know and songs they do know and I have nearly every Hamilton lyric memorized because I’m just cool like that and I love my friends and call my friends and I borrow things and give them back and tell people when they have a green thing stuck in their teeth and I get tired but I have insane amounts of energy and I do yoga everyday and remember to be grateful…..

Mama takes a deep breath and smiles and does her best “hahaha aren’t you silly” laugh.

Mama:  Oh Baby Girl, you know Mama does things, you don’t mean that!

Baby Girl continues building sandcastle with evil grin on her face.

Mama drinks more wine.

The End.

Ok maybe not the end. This conversation did happen in pretty much those same circumstances- I may have a slight tendency for the dramatic. I could have called this piece “Stay At Home Mom Problems” or “How I Taught My 4-Year-Old To Be Nothing” or “Drinking Too Much Wine At The Beach”. But it was a quick, short-lived moment and when I asked her again later, though her response was almost the same, she added something pretty wonderful:

“I want to be like you, Mama, and take care of the babies.”

Now, I know as her little spirit grows, she will see the billion pieces of her mother and all that I am and try to be and she will multiply those pieces to infinity into something all of her own. And, yes, I may have wished for a traditional answer of “Doctor” or “Artist” or even “Decent, Contributing Member to Society”. But, I think we are doing ok for ourselves if we are the kind of people who always look out for the babies, the underdogs, the scared ones, the hurting ones, the ones who need us in this world.

So run on, my little warrior girl.

Damn straight, you and I will always take care of the babies.