Today I went to the pool in something other than my “mom” bathing suit. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with it for a few years now, but it was time to say goodbye (feel free to sing that in an Andrea Bocelli voice). I got my mom bathing suit after my last one fell apart, probably after being stretched too far by that post-baby extra fifteen, er, twenty-five pounds. I got it on clearance from Land’s End. It’s the color of an eggplant (not a lot of choice in the clearance section, ya know?), has a halter top for easy breastfeeding access and a skirt that fully covers my thighs.
I really liked to think I was wearing it because I was super modest and that was important to me, but really I just didn’t want to have to think about my thighs. And I also didn’t want to have to spend anymore time shaving my legs than I had to. That extra thirty to sixty seconds that it takes to shave the top quarter of my legs? That’s enough time for my kids to find the knife drawer, start a sword fight, and burn down the house.
But today, I wanted to swim. And I didn’t want an annoying skirt dragging beneath me or annoyingly clinging to my legs and dripping when I got out of the pool (There’s really nothing like looking like you’re peeing every time you leave the pool). And I didn’t want to worry about my halter top coming off the one area of my body that has lost weight since having babies. There’s nothing modest about having a wardrobe malfunction while getting out of the pool. So I took a deep breath, held it, and squeezed myself into my pre-kids “exercise” swimsuit. And you know what my husband said tonight, without even knowing the mental struggle I’ve been having over this? “You looked really cute in your bathing suit today.” Well, shucks. He never said that when I looked like a peeing eggplant. The mom bathing suit is officially going in the donation bin.
