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The other day on our nightly “family walk”, after asking The Daddy how the surf had been that morning, I commented, “One of these days I’m going to get back out in the water.” He said back to me, “Yeah, I don’t even think of you as a surfer anymore.” I hope he was joking. It seemed like he was joking. I asked if he was joking. “Yeah, of course I was joking.” Hm.

That didn’t sit well with me and I started thinking about all the things that comprised my identity before I became The Mommy. School counselor. Wife. Surfer. Swimmer. Runner. Compulsive Project Starter. Sometimes Project Non-finisher. One time Triathlete. Some of that has definitely changed but other things remain. Like the project starter and project non-finisher. That’s hard-wired, I think (I am getting better about that, though). But the rest has seemed to just fall away until all that is left is Mommy. Oh, there are parts of my identity that are still important and that I make sure I pay attention to (um, like Wife, for instance!) but the majority of who I am right now and who I need to be right now is Mommy.

The way that I want to do things while she’s young seems to entail putting aside my interests and parts of me that I really used to enjoy. Sure, I could hire a babysitter and go do some stuff for me but I just don’t want to. The only person I’ve ever left Tater Tot with is my mother (and The Daddy, of course) and she lives an hour and a half away. Not conducive to all-the-time babysitting. I don’t want to go through the hassle of finding someone good that I trust and worrying about it anyway. I want to be the one taking care of her. That was the whole point of quitting my job. That’s just the way I want to do it and the way I think is best for my particular child. The way I figure it, I will figure out how to re-connect with those things I love later when she is a bit older (or I’m ready to lose my sanity, whichever comes first!). Not that I’m not going to do any of those things between now and then but I can’t count on immersing myself in them like I used to. No surfing 4-5 times a week. At least not until she’s in preschool! I’ll be the mommy dropping her daughter off with the surfboard strapped to the top of the car, peeling out at the end of the parking lot and heading straight to the beach.

So I find things that I enjoy doing that can be done in bits and pieces without being demanding like sewing, this web site, my hideous chair project, and “sprucing up” our house. I really do enjoy decluttering and planning free or low cost ways to make our house a pleasant, relaxing place to be. Since I’m spending almost all of my time here, I might as well make it a place I love to be! And, when the time is right, I may return to the things that I used to love. But, for right now, being The Mommy is fine with me.