Humor, Motherhood

MEGOT Status

Now, If you have an award here for someone who can carry a trunkful of grocery bags into the house without breaking a single egg, I’m your girl. A prize for knowing how many bowel movements each child has had on a given day and what their favorite flavor toothpaste is? Bam. Award for forgetting to brush a child’s teeth or going way too long between haircuts and nail trims? Yep. But Mother of the Year? Even the statuette I’m holding looks exhausted and fragile. Wait, is this supposed to look like me? Did you guys model this after the picture of me picking sand out of my eyes at the beach last summer? Is this just another plastic action figure for me to trip on? Continue reading MEGOT Status

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Motherhood, Poetry

[The Beauty of] M[otherhood]

Motherhood is messy. It’s mounds of mac ‘n’ cheese and macrame art. Motherhood magnifies mere mortals, makes Marian martyrs out of mall rats. Motherhood is a masquerade, a mission, a mirror. It’s the ministry of missing mittens. It mutates and metabolizes, muddles minds and mesmerizes. It’s the merging of meek and mighty. It’s malodorous and melodious. It’s midwinter mud pies and midweek mayhem. Motherhood is … Continue reading [The Beauty of] M[otherhood]

Melissa Kutsche7 Comments
Poetry

Midnight Scream

We learned lyrics to the fight songsang them in a sea of strangers on Saturday morningsthen, fueled by victory or losswe looped arms around each other’s shoulders and swayed to the softness of the alma mater.They told us if we walked into a crowded bar inBrazil and yelled, “Go Green!” someone would respond, “Go White!”because that’s what it means to be a Spartan.And we believed … Continue reading Midnight Scream

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Motherhood

A Body I Can’t Trust

My hair has fallen out two more times since I had my daughter. I have peed my pants on multiple occasions, sometimes in public, often while running but also from sneezing (always because I didn’t do enough kegels). Almost nine years into motherhood, my body is still capricious. Fickle. Unforgiving. But this body has also nursed three babies. She has cared for feverish kiddos while wiping her own drippy nose and made broccoli cheese soup from scratch with a toddler strapped to her back. This is the body that kisses foreheads goodnight and dances in the living room after dinner. My body has been on a journey, but she’s returning as someone I recognize, someone I can rely on. Continue reading A Body I Can’t Trust

Melissa Kutsche11 Comments
Motherhood

That’s Just the Mom That I Am

It started with a discussion about Halloween costumes. I let the kids get fancy store-bought costumes this year, I texted my college roommates, all of them moms. I continued to talk about how I usually have them choose something from our dress-up bin or find something secondhand. I couldn’t fight the urge to explain myself. Then, my friend Katie responded. Our kids have store-bought costumes, … Continue reading That’s Just the Mom That I Am

Melissa Kutsche3 Comments