modeling parenthood

I spend a lot of time thinking about who I want to be as a parent. (In all honesty, I fear I may actually spend more time thinking about it than actually being the parent I want to be which is a whole new set of failures waiting to happen.) I suspect I become marginally more insufferable every time the word "modeling" comes out of my mouth (or fingertips for online), as it does at least once or twice a week (in a slow week).

I want to model good eating habits, being a reader, being involved in my church community, etc. I want to model model model model.

Heh. Now I have a disturbing image of myself as Kate Moss. Ick.

Only, isn't it appropriate? Am I making myself sick, trying to contort into this image of Ideal Parent? And when does striving for Ideal Parenthood cross the line into inauthenticity? If I model being a reader for my daughter, what am I modeling when fully 70% of what I read is romance novels? What am I modeling when my daughter sits at dinner where half my plate is vegetables, but she also sees me scarf down an entire carton of Whopper chocolates in a day? (And let's face it: there's no way she's going to overlook that spectacle. It happens often enough.)

She will judge me - that's a given. We all judge our parents and find them wanting somehow, somewhere. But what will she make of me when she does? Her wildly inconsistent mother who wants the best for her and is trying to cobble together what that means, the same as every new parent. I choose not to imagine what she'll roll her eyes about to her friends 20 years from now. It's probably none of my business anyway.

Ultimately, isn't this who I am? She may judge me as a wildly inconsistent mother who struggled against her own bad habits to try to pass on better ones to her daughter. I may fail miserably, but I hope she takes away that I tried at all, even if she pities me a little (a lot?) for how hard I'm trying to turn my life inside out to be a better person in her eyes.