I'm that one girl

I don’t want to be famous, really, but I’d like to be marginally famous. Like when people saw me they’d think I look familiar, but they can’t place my name. Or they interchange me with someone else. They’d say “Oh, aren’t you that girl from. . .um. . .that one thing?” and I’d nod, say yes, and go on with my business. They wouldn’t want my autograph, but I wouldn’t blame them. I would be protective of my anonymity because it would encourage me to get the role of “quirky best friend” or “outlandish shop keeper.”

I think it’s funny that early in my brother’s career as a rockstar a group of girls chased him down, screaming for an autograph and it turned out they thought he was Beck. That’s funny and humbling. But now they recognize him. I wonder how you ever get used to that.

I’d like to have a little more money, but what I really crave is power. Most days I am putting out little fires and trying to maintain the minimum glamour which is my life. I’m not even in control of when I will eat, sleep, or use the bathroom (sorry, but I hope I made my point). It would be nice to have to make really important decisions that seem important. I realize that raising children is really the ultimate power–”the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world” kind of thing, but it doesn’t always feel like power. Usually it feels like servitude. I guess I’m a little dramatic and part of me wants to storm into a board meeting wearing a designer power suit, throw a briefcase down on the table and yell, “We’ve been going about this all wrong! We’re going in another direction! We’re changing everything!”

I know raising children will pay off to those who matter most to me in the most significant ways, of course, or I wouldn’t be doing it. But sometimes when my kids look at me I get a creepy suspicion that they see right through me and have me figured out: that I don’t really know what I’m doing. Sometimes that feeling is overwhelmingly tragic, and sometimes it’s funny. Usually it’s funny.

And in those moments, like today, when I'm vacuuming up tortilla chips from under the area rugs for the second time of the day, or wiping off bubblegum shake off the walls from three days ago, and I think about how I was a "featured extra" in a movie, but just got a call to find out my scene found its way on the cutting room floor, I look at my beautiful son Hugh and my adorable toddler Margaret drawing with marker on the family room couch, and I smile, drinking it all in and I know it's all worth it.

Just kidding! I tell them to knock it off, that we don't draw on the furniture forcryingoutloud, and I clean it up and weep softly.

(It's worth it, my beautiful darlings, but my parenting isn't directly proportionate to my ability to clean FORCRYING OUTLOUD!)