It took a total lack of privacy for me to really feel like a mother.
I am a mother, so privacy isn't something I'm terribly used to. After giving birth to three children and nursing them all, there's not much of my body that hasn't been exposed to the city at large. Or at least that's how it feels.
I have been in stirrups, conversing with my doctor about my toe nail polish while trying to imagine how much longer its going to be.
I have had at least four people staring at my nether regions, one with their hand buried within said regions, trying to determine my dilation or lack thereof.
My insides have been on the outside as all three of my children were cut from my body.
Everyone in the hospital (I may have missed a custodian or two) and my pediatricians office have seen my breasts, examined my breasts, and commented on the supply in my breasts.
During my Essure procedure, people were in a out, greeted by the sight of me in stirrups, open to the world, because it was demonstration day. My response? "Well, it's nothing half of town hasn't seen by now. Come on in!"
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Privacy and modesty are things of the past.
But I have to draw the line somewhere. And I draw the line in the bathroom.
And its probably not where you'd think that line would be. I don't care about company while I'm on the throne. Or putting on my make up, brushing my teeth, counting crows feet or gray hairs.
My line is right around my bathtub. That's my own personal no fly zone.
I do not want to talk, to share, or even to see another soul when I'm up to my eyebrows in bubbles and immersed in both scalding hot water and some tawdry romance.
I don't want to see my husband when I'm wrapped up in Scotland with a Highland warrior. (Who, for the sake of my marriage, we'll say looks exactly like my huband.)
I don't want to hear my children calling for me when I'm submersed in a fantasy life that is totally sans children. (I love you, but just go away. Let mommy decide whether or not to drown herself now or later, honey.)
I want the outside world to fade away for at least thirty minutes. I want that "Calgon, take me away" moment. Or that Roseanne fantasy with the beautiful bath and hot attendants. I want to pretend I'm someone else for thirty minutes before I return to my own life and begin slugging away at feedings, dirty diapers, and runny noses.
And its not because I don't love my life. I do, in the same way an alcoholic loves his drink. Obsessively, compulsively, and uncontrollably. But no twelve step program can cure my addiction. "My, my name is Crazy and I'm a Momaholic."
"Hi, Crazy!"
I just think in my mom contract there should be one little section that reads, "Under no circumstances, under penalty of a slow and painful nagging death, will any one person disturb Mommy while she is at her bath."
Or with my Highland warror.
That looks just like my husband.
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