You Can't Suck it in For 8 Hours

It’s the first day of my beach vacation. I pour myself into my new bikini and avoid all close encounters with the mirror before heading out the door. I don’t feel great, my post-baby fat hanging out over the top of the bikini bottoms, so I try to rearrange my bikini top to enhance my droopy mom boobs as I flip-flop my way to the beach.

I do not feel confident in my swimsuit. I do, however, feel confident that if I stand just the right way, with my buttcheeks angled out to sea and my arms crossed to draw all attention to my boobs, I can almost look skinny. Probably not supermodel skinny, but certainly MILF worthy.

As my husband plants our beach umbrella in the sand and the kids scamper off to run in the surf, I slowly slip my cute beach shirt up over my head. My eyes dart to and fro, one staying firmly fixed on the kids, and the other on the look-out for anyone who might be looking at my figure with disdain.

I finally make it down to the surf, my toes curling in the soft, wet sand, the small waves lapping around my ankles. I twist and turn, check and double-check, push my sunglasses back up my nose, and as a last ditch effort, I suck in my gut prepared to stand in this position for the rest of the day.

Thirty seconds later my daughters clamor for me to come down and play in the sand with them. That is when I realize that you can’t suck it in for eight hours. You can’t stand in that perfect position, with the sun shining on your best features while the shadows hide all the others away, and enjoy your life – your very existence at the same time.

You can’t suck it in for eight hours, but you can suck it in long enough to take one great photo. You can suck it in for a minute or even two. You can suck it in long enough for your partner to give you an appreciative glance and maybe even a catcall. You can suck it in if an especially good-looking group of 20-somethings runs past you Baywatch-style. Most importantly, you can suck it in long enough to take that one good photo, a perfect moment that you can conveniently store away as your entire memory of the vacation.

For the rest of those eight hours, all 478 glorious minutes of sun, sand and sunscreen, you can let it all go. That’s what I do. I fill my days with laughs and giggles, buried hands and feet, tiny, sandy buttcheeks and hugely smiling faces. I let go of my need to project the perfect image, to try and convince a group of complete strangers whom I will likely never see again, that I am a fit fashionista straight from the runway.

As I let out that deep breath I am holding, watching my tummy pooch sink back down to the edge of my bikini bottoms and the sunlight illuminate the stretchmarks on my thighs, I look down into the bright, blue eyes of my little girls and vow never again to let vanity stand between me and them. Well, maybe not never, but at least until the next time I try to suck it in for eight hours.

Lynn Morrison is a smart-ass American raising two prim princesses with her obnoxiously skinny Italian husband in Oxford, England. If you’ve ever hidden pizza boxes at the bottom of the trash or worn maternity pants when not pregnant, chances are you’ll like her blog The Nomad Mom Diary. You can also find Lynn over on Facebook, Twitter and in the awesome new book ‘I Just Want to Be Alone’.