Things I said I'd never do

I had one of those moments today—the kind I swore I’d never have before I had kids and that used to invoke judgey thoughts about the mother whose kids were running amok.

I was on the way home from work, having just picked up The Boy at daycare. Typical after work routine is as follows: drive to daycare provider’s home, collect child, drive the four minutes home while multitasking, AKA HeyTelling friends, arrive home, remove work clothes and put on lounging garb, park booty on couch to nurse child and peruse social media sites.

The moment I drove by Walgreens I remembered I still hadn’t gotten DH a birthday card (um yeah, it’s today…happy birthday, babe). I fought the urge to keep driving, in spite of my fleece pajama pants beckoning me at home, and pulled into the lot.

“It’ll be super easy,” I told myself. In and out. No stroller, no cart, no Ergo needed. With The Boy on my hip I made a beeline for the card aisle as fast as my work-height heels could carry me.

So, I’m the kind of person who could spend 45 minutes looking for that perfect greeting card. I search, compare, hymn and haw. I scanned the categories looking for what I needed— “Husband Birthday” and “Birthday from Son.” I was picking up cards, reading for appropriateness, putting them back, and picking them up again, all the while carrying an oversized purse and a toddler who was becoming increasingly squirmy. And HEAVY. I decided to put him down—you know, just for a second—to rest my arm. The moment those little size 5 Stride Rites hit the ground I knew I’d made a grave error.

Within three seconds my son had two fists full of cards and envelopes and was ready to eat them for dinner. I dropped my purse and snatched the cards out of his hands (thankfully unscathed) to put them back. And of course, as I did that, he seized the opportunity to make a mad dash down the aisle. Living up to his title of “toddler,” he ran a few unsteady paces, stumbled, and did a belly flop onto the floor like a drunkard. I think he even slid a few inches on the slick floor.

Mind you, I was raised by a mother whose favorite words were “DON’T TOUCH!” I was never allowed to ride in a grocery store cart (some germophobe just like my mom probably invented the shopping cart cover) and she carried her own illness-free booster seat into restaurants for me to use. I was never to dream of touching a hand railing on a mall escalator (unless I was falling to my death…and even that was iffy) and riding on one of those grocery store carousels was out of the question. I was raised to believe public = dirty.

I scooped my kid up off the floor and he pulled the trademark back-arching, limp noodle move that I swear kids take some seminar to perfect, making it next to impossible to lift him. At that moment I caught a glimpse of us in that huge mirror that runs the length of the drugstore and realized that, oh dear GOD, I was one of those mothers whose child is throwing a tantrum all over the floor of a public place. And not only was my child on the floor, but so was I, and so was my Coach purse, its contents, and a dozen greeting cards. After all my smug years of shooting the side-eye to such spectacles, I was THAT woman.

I couldn’t help myself—I burst out laughing at myself and the ridiculously hilarious irony of the sight. I was still chuckling to myself as I thought about another thing I could never understand before: parents putting their child on a leash.

But hey, at least they look like backpacks/cute little stuffed animals nowadays, right?

…RIGHT?

I’m kind of an imposter.

Shortly after M was born, I knew I was going to have about 6 months maternity leave to be home with him, so I decided I should build myself a support system of other moms in the area. As much as I love my “online friends,” I don’t have many friends IRL that have kids, and the ones that do live almost an hour away.
I joined a local meet up group for moms via Meetup.com. I paid the small fee and wrote the obligatory introductory paragraph about myself and how I couldn’t wait to meet everyone.

Except I never did.

Every time I’d look at the event calendar, I think, “Ohhh, that’s not a good place to take a newborn to” or “Oh, that’s reeeally early in the morning” or some other lame excuse I concocted in my head. Some of my reasons were legit, but more times than not, I was just too intimidated to go. I eventually gave up and dropped out when it became clear I was never going to go to anything before returning to work.

See, I’m not the typical mommy you see at the park. I’ve hung on to some (OK, maybe quite a bit) of the cynicism that pregnancy loss and infertility engraved on my heart. I swore I’d never be one of those annoying moms I loathed that had nothing better to do than talk about their kid’s bowel movements and see little Junior’s annoying antics as “so cute!!”

Now that I’m on the other side, I get it. I get why moms think THEIR kid is THE cutest, and why some people have the urge to put every new milestone on blast via every possible social networking medium. There’s something amazing and hilarious and interesting and totally awe-inspiring about raising a child that makes you want to shout from the rooftops…especially when your road to parenthood was not exactly paved with sunshine.

Having said that, I like to think I’m still at least a little bit of the same person I was before I had a baby. I still don’t think ALL kids are cute. I get annoyed by people who let their children treat a restaurant like a playground. I know that not everyone cares that my baby is [this.close] to walking or talking or doing long division or whatever.

And on top of all that, I’m a working mom. (Gasp, I know.) So no, I don’t spend all day/everyday with my child, even though most days I really want to.

A couple weeks ago, my work went to a summer schedule where everyone works four 10-hour days in exchange for Fridays off. I made a decision that I really want to make these Fridays fabulous. I don’t want them to feel like just another vacation day or holiday, where I sleep in and scuffle around the house all day in my pajamas with my hair looking like a rat has taken up residency in it. I want to get up early (but not too early) and enjoy a lovely cup of coffee in my own kitchen (instead of in my car on the mad dash to work) while M eats breakfast that I made from scratch. I want to get out in the sunshine and take M to the park, or the zoo, or the bookstore, or to lunch with a friend--and all on A WEEKDAY MORNING, OMG OMG. I want to live the life of a SAHM.

Anyway, that play group I mentioned. I joined it again. I figured that M is older now, and more mobile and social and portable. And I know it would probably be good for me to finally have a few “mom friends,” even though that term makes my gag reflex twitch a little.

So last Friday I got us out the door and to a splash park to meet some new people. After a few (OK, several) minutes of wandering around the crowded park trying to remember what some of the women and/or their kids from this effin playgroup look like, someone came up to me and said, “Are you Courtney? I’m Kerrie! And is this M?? He’s adorable! We’re so happy you’re here!”

So I’m thinking:
A. Woah, this chick did her homework.
B. What was I thinking coming here?
C. I’m so not cut out for this.

But I said:“Thank you! We’re so excited to be here. And how old is your little one?” Smile. Nod. Smile.

Here we are at the park. I'm doing the awkward "I don't know anyone so I'll just sit here and eavesdrop on your convo" thing and M is obviously thinking how he'd rather nurse than splash around in some lame ass fountains.

As the morning went on, I met probably 10 other moms whose names I forgot five seconds after they told me, and twice as many kids. Just as I’m starting to feel comfortable, one mom says how she almost didn’t come.

“You know how it is…the house is a mess; the kids won’t pick up their toys. I told Hudson that if he didn’t clean up, we were NOT going to the splash park. Well he didn’t do it but then MOMMY just NEEDED to get out of the house by then. My husband says I need to follow through when I tell the boys something like that, but he doesn’t know how it is!! HE’S not home with them all day! He gets to go to work all day and talk to adults and check his email and go out to LUNCH for crying out loud. He doesn’t GET IT.”

All the moms nodded their heads in agreement. Except me…I pretended to rummage in the diaper bag for sunscreen.

Then later, a mom was explaining how they moved to the area from an expensive metropolitan city so she could stay home with the kids because “that’s what is most important” and “they’re only little once.”

That’s when I realized that I was a total poser. I was like that girl who calls a friend on three-way just to see what they’d say about her when they didn’t know she was on the line. After all, I was at the park with my son at 11:00 in the morning on a Friday. Everyone assumed I was a SAHM. It’s not that it never occurred to me that there probably wouldn’t be any other working moms in the group. I figured there’d be one teacher on summer break, or someone with a flexible schedule, or at least a part-timer, but I knew that they might all be SAHMs.

So I was totally caught off guard when I suddenly felt very, very different. And not in a good way. I felt like a total fake. Like every word out of my mouth had been a lie because I never disclosed who I really was—a working mom. I’m not someone who can skip off to the bookstore for story time on a Wednesday. I can’t watch your kid last minute while you go run an errand. And, sitting among those women at that moment, that made me feel embarrassed and awkward and guilty. And kinda sad, because it had been a great morning…and it was so great that knowing that it was a limited time gig made the whole day sorta depressing.

I had seen the other side, and it looked good. And I couldn’t have it, at least not now.

When I left the park, everyone said how great it was to meet me, and that they were looking forward to next time. I smiled and said, “Me too!” knowing it was a lie, because unless my boss will let me have the afternoon off for the library’s puppet show, then that’s probably not going to happen.

I firmly believe that every family should do what works for them, whether that means one parent at home caring for the kids or both at work outside the home. There is no one size fits all solution, and every family’s needs, lifestyle, financial obligations, and preferences should be taken into account. I don’t think either SAHMs or WMs should be made to feel guilty or ‘less than’ for the choices they make, as long as their families are healthy, happy and prospering.
But on that day, I couldn’t help but feel like a guilty outsider.

…An outsider who just paid a year’s worth of dues to be an inferior member of the Superior Moms Club. Fabulous.