“Mom! I’m at the grocery, and I need your help!”
I dropped my mug of coffee, shooed the cats out of my way, and headed toward my purse so I could grab my car keys and head to the grocery.
Were there armed bandits raiding the frozen food aisle?
Lunch meat marauders?
Fruit-n-veggie fiends?
No matter! I’d fight my way past them all to rescue my baby girl!
“All right, I’m on my way!” I said. “Just tell me what’s happening. Whisper or talk in code words if you must...”
“What? Mom, I just need help in figuring out the best way to make a big cookie. You know, like the ones at the mall. Except from scratch.”
I dropped my car keys, gave the cats an apologetic scratch between their ears and headed back to the kitchen to clean up the mug and the spilled coffee.
“That’s why you’re calling me?” I asked.
“Yes! I promised I’d bring in a cookie-cake for one of my classes. So I need for you to remind me of the ingredients...”
“Can’t you just buy some cookies instead of going to all that effort?”
“What? No! Homemade is better! So please hurry with that ingredient list because I still have rowing and two tests to study for and laundry and...”
Here we go, I thought. Superwoman Syndrome. And at the tender young age of 18.
I flashed back to when my husband and I took birth classes while I was pregnant with her. One day our instructor was in tears. We asked her if she was OK, bracing ourselves for some sad news.
Our instructor’s chin quivered as she said: “I have to make seven dozen cookies for my son’s holiday party! And he keeps eating the most perfect ones, no matter how many times I tell him to eat the ones I didn’t do a perfect job in decorating! So now, I have to start all over...”
This full-time nurse, wife and mother-of-three was worried about what a classroom of third-graders thought of her cookie artistry?
“Superwoman Syndrome,” I said to my husband on the way home. “I swear, I’ll never do that to myself or my kids.”
Now, 18 years later, my own kid was exhibiting dread symptoms of the syndrome.
Had I infected her, after all?
I thought back. Hmmm. Yes, despite my self-righteous promise to always be a Zen-like, relaxed mom, I could think of plenty of times when I felt I just had to make the perfect cookies, or muffins or party or bedtime story or event or ... whatever.
Not that I get all the credit/blame for my daughter having Superwoman Syndrome.
Imagery of it is everywhere. It is in the very air of our culture.
And I know, all too well, that part of the syndrome is actively resisting the merest suggestion that one doesn’t have to be perfect in all areas of your life all at once. That sometimes it’s OK to just buy the cookies.
So I didn’t try to talk her out of making the perfect cookie-cake.
Instead, when she got home, even though she wouldn’t consider letting me actually help her with the baking, I dropped everything, made fresh coffee and chatted with her while her cookie-cake baked.
The first step to curing (or diverting) Superwoman Syndrome: learning there’s no need to suffer through it alone.
Sharon Short’s column runs Monday in Life. Send e-mail to sharonshort@sharonshort.com.
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