What One Perfectionist Mother Looks Like

I never considered myself a perfectionist before I had children. Perfectionism was someone else’s problem. It was the affliction of those pasty-faced library moles that haunted the campus stacks on Saturday nights, still cramming after everyone else had left to grab a beer. It was the curse of the hulking workout kings who passed entire spring days pumping and groaning in the mirror-lined mausoleum of the campus gym.

Perfectionism was what made frazzled mothers stay up all night hand-sewing Halloween costumes and what turned fathers into red-faced sideline screamers or workaholics who missed the game altogether. A perfectionist was that tortured soul who always seems to land in front of me in the salad bar line, the one who inspects each lettuce leaf as if sifting for gold and complains to the waiter about the radish shaving someone dropped in the fat-free ranch. That’s a perfectionist, I thought. And that’s not me.