What comes between me and my Calvins? Two decades and the trash can.

“That’s nice, if denim pants resting just a whisper below an ever-dropping bust line is the look you’re shooting for.” Humph.

These pants weren’t six inches above my belly button last time I wore them. Going through my closet, I was trying on items that hadn’t been exposed to air for decades.

My daughter gasped. “What are you doing wearing Wheezy’s jeans?”

Wheezy is my mother and I wasn’t wearing her jeans. Though now I am a mother so technically it should be okay to wear jeans with foot-long, foot-wide pleats. When I last wore this pair, the term Mom Jeans did not exist as a scorned subset of denim wear. Everyone from Rob Lowe to a very un-mummyish Cindy Crawford wore them. Even Nancy Reagan took off her red suits at the Western White House long enough to slip some high-pockets over her usually couture-touting waistline.

Change. If only I could recognize the need to reconfigure my life as easy as catching a glimpse of me wearing a denim-pocketed inner tube with legs. How do I miss the fact that I’ve walked the same triangle between the fridge, the sink and the stove for so many years until I look up from a three-sided tunnel six feet under?

There are welcome constants in life. Spouses, children and the fact that my heater kicks on when I raise the thermostat temperature every morning. But sometimes, we have dreams. Not wickedly delicious dreams of switching children with cardboard cutouts from old Sound of Music posters, but dreams of new challenges, wide open vistas, a glimmer of hope that we might once again glimpse the bottom of the laundry basket.

There is no doubt we look different without our Mom Jeans – a bit bare. Bare and different scare some folks.

But Mom Jeans scare everyone. Well, except my mother. She’s terribly brave.

It’s hard to pry fingers off pants with a built in pooch concealer. But with a little perseverance I found pairs of jeans manufactured since the new millennium that hug the right spots without too much tugging or spilling. (Though the right top is critical. Alas, that is an entirely different column.)

If you only have time and resources for small changes, make small changes. Giving up a 250 calorie candy bar five times a week results in losing around 19 pounds in a year. By taking down one ornament from the Christmas tree each day, everything will be back in the attic for a week before it needs to be hauled down next year. If the way we’ve been doing things year after year isn’t getting us where we want to be, maybe it’s time to try a different route.

Throw out your Mommy Striders. Throw out whatever is comfortable. Change often feels awkward when first slipped over skin. What holds us back because it’s seems easier than figuring out how to rearrange reality? Join me in 2011. Feel the cold hard freedom of a denim manufacturer’s fastener against your bare skin — dare I say it – a sensible two-and-a-half inches below your navel.

You and your children will thank me. I promise.