I Met *HER* Today

I finally found her, in the park.  I have been wondering if she was real, or simply a figment of my imagination triggered by the paranoia inspired by modern media.

Yet, out of nowhere, there she was.  I didn't recognize her, at first.  She looked like just another mom in the park watching her toddler and hanging out with other moms.  True, this particular group of moms she was with was exceptionally fit-looking, with well groomed hair, fingernails, toenails, and kids.  I overheard them talk about their desire for pedicures, so I knew we had little in common.  Still, I didn't recognize her.

Then, after about a half hour of sitting near each other, and chatting just a little, I watched her pick up an infant from a stroller I didn't see earlier.  Hmm.  She had not one kid with her, but two, then.  The baby was not too small, but still, there was something about the way he was curled up that triggered a recognition in me.

"Oh, you have a really little one!"

"Yes," she answered.  "He's two weeks old."

At that moment I recognized her.  With her perfect hair, her clear complexion, her well-rested eyes, her makeup, her trim figure and fashionably tattered clothing, I don't know how I didn't see her before.

She is that mom -- the mythically, etherally, perfect mom from the cover of parenting magazines.  Two weeks post-partum, and she looks almost airbrushed.  Her infant didn't cry, and her toddler had no dirt stains on her dress.  She and her children all looked well-combed and thoughtfully dressed.  None of them looked tired, there were no red eyes (from tears or otherwise), and no one had a drippy nose even in the middle of a terrible allergy season.   She was stunning, in a blonde-next-door-meets-Kim-Kardashian kind of way.  Even her clothes were stylishly shabby and unassumingly cute ... provided you overlooked the fact that she bought them that way.

In all ... she was perfect.

It was unnatural.

I am deeply suspicious.  She seemed knowledgable about things like how hard it is to convince a small child to leave a playground gracefully.  She seemed to understand about boo boos and the tension between giving your kids freedom to be independent and the desire to be a helicopter parent.

And yet, something was very wrong with this picture.

Either those perfect kids weren't really hers, or she wasn't a real person. 

Real women two weeks post-partum don't sit angelically at a picnic table looking serene and well-rested. 

Real children don't play in the dirt-playground in white dresses without stains.

Real babies don't sit quietly for hours waiting for their turn to have attention.

I think someone gave her a dressing room, a hairstyle, makeup, a suporting cast of actors and actresses, and sent her into the park that day.  I'm not sure who gains from this, but someone wants us to think that kind of perfection really exists in the world.

I am not buying it.  She was a fake.