I'm Not a Mom

Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that I'm not one. I'm not married; in fact, I'm as single as one could possibly be. And while you'll find several orphan advocacy sites in my browser history, I have never even made the first step in the adoption process, nor do I expect to do so for a very, very long time. I never ended up becoming a nanny, and I haven't even baby-sat for awhile.

So why do I have to remind myself that I'm not a mom?

Maybe it's because kids are over all the time. And I'm not even talking about the retreat guests. Earlier this week, I had challenged Lyvvie to Risk, promising that if she could beat me, I would try to play Movie Star Planet. (Apparently it's a hit tween game right now; I choose to just make fun of it whenever she mentions it!) She came over yesterday to finish the game we've been working on all week, which of course I won. However, I did tell her we could play Risk as many times as she wanted with the same stakes, so we had a rematch. Just as our game had ended, there were suddenly three kids in my kitchen who all wanted to take my computer to play Movie Star Planet! After a just-for-fun, crazy fight that would put pro wrestling to shame, we ended up starting a game of four-person Risk, but gave up after a few rounds and started to make homemade soft pretzels instead. I just finished all the cleaning from that!

Perhaps it's because I actually am the parent... of a hermit crab. I adopted a hermit crab from the nursery a week ago. His name is Ferb. (Believe it or not, I actually wasn't the one that named  him!) But I don't think this is the case because I'm not that good of a parent to Ferb. I feed him my leftovers every now and then, set his crabitat next to a heater, and other than that I occasionally bug him just to make sure he's still alive. In fact, he rarely comes out of his shell when I pick him up, but he seems to always come out when Kirk is holding him. (Of course, Ferb also pinched him, so I'm not sure who he likes better.) I know I'll also be bad at hiring a sitter, because I let Owen hold the hermit crab, and he dropped Ferb! I'm hoping that I one day become a better human parent than a crab parent. Then again, children aren't so picky about their heat and humidity level. They also don't dig a hole and stay there for days... well, at least not until they become teenagers!

Here's Ferb, refusing to come out even for his first photo. 

It could be because of my volunteer activities. I work at camp, which of course involves children, but what do I do outside of camp? Let's see... Truth in Training: children. Jefferson House: children. Toastmasters: old people! Two out of three times my extracurriculars directly involve working with children. Last week we hosted a children's workers' retreat. Although I am a children's worker in several aspects, I rarely thought about the seminars in that context and instead thought "ooh, this would be good for when I have kids someday". Even the day-to-day things I "volunteer" for are something only me or a mother would do. While working on this post, I took a break to do some laundry. Someone else's clothes were in the dryer, and while taking them out, I noticed that a pair of pants had a hole in it. Next thing I know, I'm sewing that hole up, all the while thinking "These aren't my pants. Why am I doing this?" Last summer, several people referred to me as the secondary camp mom. Yes, it makes total sense that Paula would be the primary camp mom, but being only a year or two older than most of the staff (and younger than several others), this name just made me feel old!

Or maybe I've come to face reality that I can no longer be thought of as a kid in any aspect, so I do the next best thing and hang out with them as much as possible. I sit in the unofficial teen section at church. In fact, I don't even know anyone my age there. Sometimes I just feel like acting my shoe size instead of my age, and the other eleven-year-olds don't seem to mind! I always laughed at the fact that my sister eats baby food. However, after grocery shopping this afternoon, I came home with ten containers of Gerber!

If it's any consolation, the only reason I bought these was because they were on clearance.  And you know what else? I just ate the banana yogurt, and it was the best yogurt I've had in a long time.

I'm not a mom, and for the time being, I really don't want to be. Being called "Mom", to me, is still an insult synonymous to a senile who constantly nags. (Not that this describes my own mother at all, in case she happens to read this part! And if she does take offense in this, I live 1666 miles away from her and won't see her for a few months. And I think she's the only person who actually reads this blog, so I've gotta give her credit for that!) So I will try to stop thinking from a parenting perspective and instead know that to kids, I'm just a taller friend. Then again, I'm that to most of my adult friends too.