A mother of excellence

I know I could & should be a better mother. I have dreams & fantasies of being that better mother, of doing everything, of being the poster girl for the "women can have it all brigade" but I don't honestly have the time or inclination to do this.

We all know those mothers at the school gate who are dressed not only fashionably, but the clothes are clean & not creased, their make up is on where it should be & applied that very morning not the remnants of yesterday. The mothers who make it all seem so easy with their perfect, clean & tidy homes, well-behaved children & who have everything together in a way that looks so easy.

These women make me feel inadequate at best, like I am letting my son down by not being this amazing woman. The fact this woman probably pays very little attention to her child or pays people to look after him doesn't show to the knackered, tired mum wearing yesterdays clothes wondering what she can afford to cook for dinner that will be eaten by her offspring.

Even worse than these women are the "earth mothers", the ones who just ooze motherhood & parenting from their very pores. The ones who can happily spend every minute of every day painting, playing & teaching their kids, making a hundred memories daily that she will be able to look back on & enjoy. I'm lucky to make a memory like this a week!

Don't get me wrong I love being a mother & I love my son I just want more from life than mommyhood. I want to be a person in my own right, hell, I want to have grown up conversations that don't consist of talk about children.
I want to use my brain for something more than the occasional crossword.

I want to be me............ and be a mum.

A happier me would make me a better mum, I'd be more engaged in activities & be happy to play superheroes in the back garden instead of gritting my teeth & tolerating it. I'd like to be able to look forward to that playtime with my child but as it stands my whole life stems around my sons wants & activities & I have fallen by the wayside.

Can I be a more productive, happier, more interesting person?
A person in my own right with my own activities that make me a more rounded person, one who wants to spend time playing?
A person with a grown up life & who interacts in the grown up world with other adults?
Or am I destined to always be the mum who is slightly disatisfied with her life, who wants more but has never had the impetus to get up and go for it?

I guess it's up to me, only I can do this, or is it just another pipe dream?