Ahhh…Behold the Cicada

Okay so the Cicada. This insect lives underground for some-odd-number-of-years and then comes out of the ground, screams, and basically dies. Never to be heard from again.

If any of you have seen my birthday planning shenanigans, you’d think I’m one put together human. A “Pinterest Mom” – a mom you scoff at yet want to emulate.

Let me tell you a secret.

I Cicada that shit.

Those birthday parties you see? Those crazy elaborate party invites that seem completely unreal*? Those perfectly executed details? Yeah. Cicada-ed.

So, per my usual – hear me out.

In a blaze of glory, I have my moments. The “worthy” moments – the moments I post to Facebook. They are not my norm. They are moments shining and pretty and deceiving because they are not full of mothers and mothers-in-laws sticking eyes on rice krispies at the eleventh hour. They are not shots of me running around like a psycho piecing together the last seconds before I have to leave and set up the party. They are not real life. They can’t be. Because the real life (for me, at least) happens during the months of lying dormant.

Like that ill-fated Cicada, I bide my days until the time is right and then (cue the bowler hat and jazz hands!!) it is SHOW TIME, BABY!! I am queen of the themed-menus. I am the glittering starlet of toddler-friendly favor bags. I am the darling of the local party-supply economy. And you guys – it is heady. And I will ride that wagon until the wheels fall off.
But – BUT: it is exhausting because it isn’t authentic.

The love behind what I’m doing is authentic – please don’t think that I do these things strictly for the praise or for The ‘Book. No. I do them because birthday and holiday celebrations are where I choose to have my Cicada moments. And everybody, parent or otherwise, chooses where to have theirs and how often.

I bring this up because I feel like so many of us are looking at the bright and shiny moments that are plastered on Instagram and we’re feeling something. We’re feeling jealous. Curious. Enthralled. And is that…is that sadness creeping in? Why aren’t we taking our kids to the zoo? Why aren’t we chasing our kids in bikinis on a random beach? (I’ll just stop right here and say “you’re welcome” for not posting myself doing this – take my word for it.) Why aren’t we hosting class parties? Why aren’t we doing better?!

Well I’ll tell you why.

Because what you’re seeing are the Cicada moments. Somewhere between surfacing and screaming and dying, the Cicada metamorphoses and leaves behind an exoskeleton that typically hangs on tree bark or a screen porch panel. I’ve had a spare glass of wine while writing this, so let’s dive deep here and realize that the Cicada moments we’re seeing on social media require something to be left behind – but the rest of us moves on. We leave the impression of this novel version of ourselves, but we’re actually long gone.

I can tell you guys – by the time you see pictures of anything spectacular on Facebook in the way of parties or large celebrations I’ve hosted, I am in pajama pants and I am two glasses into a bottle of Pinot that I have every intention finishing. But that impression of the mom that just pulled off that mecca of fourth birthday frivolity? It is what lasts.

So my lovely, slightly-off-the-mark, “okayest” people – what do we do with these impressions that leave us feeling something?

We applaud them. We don’t do the standard “oh, only perfection is posted on social media and therefore we must hate it!!!” stance. Because somebody worked DAMN HARD to be “Insta perfect” for their moments of glory. Somebody is trying very hard to show a version of themselves that they feel that they need to be.

“But Hannah – she posts all of the time and I know they’re not that perfect!!!” Too bad. It doesn’t matter. Let the disconnect between their reality and their presentation be their battle – and let’s not make it any harder by judging them for what they choose to present.

What we can do is realize that the authenticity is ours for the taking. We can present the mundane and the underwhelming to those that want to see it or that accidentally click on our Instastories. We can post the hell out of our Cicada moments and hope that others applaud the things that we’re proud of and that we worked hard on. These major moments probably aren’t the norm, but that doesn’t mean that we’re phonies for posting them.

Just because another person’s Cicada moments are more frequent than yours, it doesn’t mean that they’re doing better. It just means that they’re doing different.  Their reasons are theirs and theirs alone.

Let’s realize that spending our time underground and waiting for our moment to come out and scream doesn’t mean that we aren’t doing spectacular things.  Let’s realize that, for most of us, life is lived in-between the Cicada moments – and while those moments are spectacular, the true “spectacular” rests in the downtime that doesn’t belong to anybody else.

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