Mommy Brain

© 2004 Christine Louise Hohlbaum, All Rights Reserved

How do you know you’ve had a bad week? Do you stumble over your feet more or forget things? A journalist asked me if Mommy Brain really exists. It is a phenomenon which occurs once you have children. Your mind never quite works right again. I had never thought of opening up my noggin to investigate the matter. But if I were to look inside my head, I might find the following things which I either perpetually forget or think I have lost forever:

· My car keys, as I am sure they were just here…
· The shopping list I left on the counter the last time I went food shopping;
· All the second socks that have taken leave of my sock drawer, never to be seen again;
· My slimmer, true self with a lineless face and the bosom of Janet Jackson (I would not consider revealing my true self the way she did – igit!);
· All the words to the pop songs sung by The Beautiful People half my age and way better looking than I;
· The sun behind the gray clouds that loom for months on end over our Bavarian sky;
· The manual to my VCR;
· The personal identification number to my ATM card;
· The entire lyrics to the Star-Spangled Banner;
· Several more hours of restful sleep a night for the remainder of my days on this green Earth;
· The ability to act cool at the mall.

There you have it. I suppose we could clone our pre-Mommy minds before we have kids. Korean scientists have secured the technology to duplicate human beings. Why not narrow down the search to just our brains? I could fill a laundry basket of pre-Mommy minds and attach it to my neck like the peanut vendors at the ball park. “Pre-Mommy Brains for sale!” I’d shout. Mothers would tumble out of their mini vans, pawing at my wares with a look in their eyes “Remember when?” And as I hand them a mirror, they will look at themselves and say “Oh, it’s you! I almost forgot…”

Christine Louise Hohlbaum, American author of Diary of a Mother: Parenting Stories and Other Stuff, has been published in hundreds of publications. When she isn’t writing, leading toddler playgroups or wiping up messes, she prefers to frolic in the Bavarian countryside near Munich where she lives with her husband and two children. Visit her Web site: http://www.DiaryofaMother.com.

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