Feel Good Friday: Muffins and Mullets.

I am participating in “Feel Good Friday” today with The Girl Next Door. If you don’t know what “Feel Good Friday” is, click here and play along! This week I’m choosing to write about something I did for myself and someone else that really made both of us happy.

On Tuesday morning Alivia and Lainey had an event at their school called “Muffins with Mom.” It’s exactly like it sounds, bring your Mom, and eat a muffin. We got to the school and Alivia’s teacher was greeting everyone at the door. When she saw Alivia she smiled and said “Don’t forget to go to the classroom first and get your special surprise for Mom!”

Alivia quickly hung her coat and bag up, then raced into the classroom to retrieve my surprise. “Here!” she said. “Put it on! You have to wear it!” What was it? It was a visor. A visor! All of the kids (preschool – 8th grade) had decorated a visor for their Mom to wear that morning. For me to tell you that I didn’t want to wear that visor, is an understatement. If I’m being completely honest, every fiber of my being was screaming NO to the visor.

I know that sounds horrible, you don’t have to tell me that. Here’s the thing though, I have had an obsession (technically it’s actually a compulsion) with my hair for as long as I can even remember. There were times in elementary school that I missed the bus because my hair wasn’t right. Elementary school people!

It didn’t help that I had a mullet. It also didn’t help that my Dad was the one who helped us get ready for school. I mean, Dads can maybe help you with a ponytail, but they’re useless when it comes to taming a wavy mullet. And when I say that I had a mullet, I mean I had a mullet from the time I was in kindergarten until the summer before 6th grade.

You don’t even want to know what I did that summer before 6th grade. I got it cut into a bowl cut. A bowl cut. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please refer to Jim Carrey in “Dumb and Dumber.” The bowl cut looked bad, really bad. To make matters worse, at some point during that summer some douche bag at a campground we were staying at mistook me for a boy, so then I got a perm. The perm looked bad too. Really really bad.

I digress. My point of all this is that from the time I was in kindergarten until basically 8th grade, my whole life was one bad hair day after another. So, when I finally had a good haircut and learned how to do it correctly, I wanted it to be perfect. Sorta like Tami + Good Hair = True Love Always. I should carve that into a tree, or maybe get a tattoo of it.

Back to Tuesday. There I am in the hallway of the school holding the visor while two wide eyed little girls stared up at me. “I have to wear this?” I asked. “Yes! All of the other Moms are wearing them!” they said. As I stood there, I thought about my hair that I had just spent half an hour on. Then I thought about going to the bathroom and trying to carefully place the visor on. I even thought about maybe letting one of the girls wear it.

But, then I thought about something else. I thought about how lucky I am to be a Mom. I thought about the kind of Mom I want to be, and the memories I want my daughters to have of me. I thought about other women I know who have lost a child or who can’t have children, and would love to be in my place right now wearing that visor.

And then without another thought, I slapped that visor on, and we went and ate our muffin. One small step for womankind. One giant leap for crazy OCD Mom.