I made a realization last night as I was doing a presentation to the mother's council of the lower school where I work: I am a mom. I know, it seems a little late to figure that out, what with the pregnancy and all: the excrutiating pain of birth, the weeks of crying and no sleep (the baby wasn't doing so well then either), the breast milk all over everything, the large ass bucket of infant I haul with me wherever I go. It's not that I keep forgetting or that it doesn't seem real, I've just never looked at other moms and felt like I was one of them. Especially at work. In fact, one of the things I like most about my job is that I am so much younger (or seem so much younger) than lots of the people around me--it contributes to my absolute age delusion which lets me pretend I'm still a cool twenty-something up on all the hip bands and happenings.
So as I was warming up my laptop and getting ready to look around the room at all of the things I used to imagine I would never become, I realized holy shit, I have more in common with the women in this room than I do with the kids I imagine to be my peer group. It wasn't a pretty realization, and it's not because I don't respect these women (though certainly that may have been the case in the past). I just really don't understand them. So far every stage of motherhood has grabbed me so completely and taken me so totally off guard that I can't even begin to imagine the next one. When I get a glimpse of it, I tremble. I really do. Will I one day (in the not-so-distant future, I might add) sit on tiny dining chairs in the school cafeteria to learn more about what my kid is doing all day or how I can be a better, more supportive parent? I hadn't even considered that until last night. And even if I never join the Mother's Council, which I totally can't even imagine having time for when I hardly make time to pee during the day, aren't these the people I will sit next to at birthday parties, the people with whom I'll have play dates and the like? Now I'm really trembling! What will I say to them? WIll they know I'm an interloper, that I don't know what I'm doing? Why do they all look so freakin competent?
I don't know what this is all about. I love love love my kid, and I've been totally floored by how much I like being a mom. So why am I always so freaked out by the moments that really drive my new life home to me? Instead of skipping off into the mommy sunset and amassing a huge rolodex of potential playdates, I cower in the corner afraid to connect with anyone. I may complain about not having many friends with young kids, but I think I also like it that way. Sure, less support, fewer resources but a lot less aggressive input, fewer conflicting ideas as well. And is it terrible to say that I love having people close to me who still get to taste the outside world, the midnight-in-a-bar or I-saw-all-the-Oscar-contenders-in-the-theater kind of people? I kind of like being the only one at the party lugging a kid along, especially when it gives me an excuse to cut out early.
Can a girl have it both ways? Can I keep on living in two worlds? I think this is one of the hardest things I'll be doing while trying to make my way as a parent: riding the line. It's like inventing myself while helping darling C. invent herself too.
1 comment:
Yes, I think the answers to your questions are yes, and I think that one of the reasons some of us don't have kids is in order to be there for those of you who do.
Here's one other way to think about it: if I'd started my PhD program thinking, how did they write those dissertations? how did they do it? how do they think big thoughts? &c. &c., I would have flipped out even more than I did. Everything looks different and harder when you first start into a new life, no? but then you go on along and realize that little by little, you've become that new life--you master things bit by bit, and then suddenly you're competent in ways you wouldn't have expected you could be (and still incompetent in ways that horrify you). I think this is the way life works.
I hope this doesn't sound as though I'm minimizing your experience, which I really wouldn't, ever. I have similar kinds of reactions now when I see representations of (gasp) spinsters and old maids and "terminally" single people. Suddenly I realize that I'm one of those people, from the outside anyway. But those representations don't have anything to do with what my lived experience feels like, just as the look of those mothers doesn't have anything to do with their lived experience, necessarily.
Obviously it's time for me to go to sleep, because obviously I'm blathering and am just still suffering some kind of logorrhea after having talked to Nick tonight.
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