...And we are not Stepford Wives.
There are days when, as I cruise through the "student drop off line" in my little econo-car, baby in the back, and 1st grader poised to spring from my vehicle for the relative freedom of "the big kid's playground" and a rousing day of recess, math, reading, and, if he's lucky, art, and I silently lament that "he's growing up so fast!" just before my thoughts turn to, finally, getting a cup of coffee, but remember that it'll have to wait because I first have to meet my friend who is also PTA president to pick up the supplies for the project I'm in charge of for the school carnival...
I realize that my days are, more or less, what summer movies poke fun at and Deperate Housewives attempts to satirize. I am a stayathomemom.
It's like one word. A title. Like Chief-Executive-Officer. Only I'm CEO of a fair amount of chaos and disorganization. I am the boss of it all, ladies and gentlemen. All the laundry, all the dishes, all the three day old never-eaten school lunches, all the piles of papers waiting to be sotred and filed.
And I am just like every other one of these moms, be they in their mini-vans, their SUVs, or their mid-life Mercedes (kids crammed two to a seat). They're tired. They stayed up until 11:30 last night making sandwiches and folding the laundry and writing a note to the teacher assuring her that little Brittney won't try to make the class hamster eat paste again. Or staying up till 11:30 just so she could actually be alone with her husband for 5 minutes without tiny hands and growing minds pulling, tugging at her, demanding "just on more snack?"
But we're not all the same. We're not the mindless, frazzled drones running blindly from soccer practice to ballet to the dry cleaners, that the movies would make us out to be. We're not the dramatic sex kittens pouting and plotting because our man never buys us jewelry, that Desperate Housewives potrays us as (though, sexy we occassionaly may be, on those days we actually get to shower and brush our teeth before 4:00 p.m.). And more often than not, we're not as in control as we would like each other to believe.
But, there are other days too. Days that I realize that my fellow PTA-moms, moms with a half dozen kids hanging from her clothes, moms with unkepmt hair and mismatched shoes, are also some pretty cool chicks. They each have a story-- just like me.
And learning their stories is one of my favorite things.
There's C., who is uber religious and from all outward appearances your stereotypical "good Christian soccer mom" that the Politicians like to court around election time. But she's also OUTRAGEOUSLY funny and, though she'll disagree with me on just about any issue du jour, she's thoughtful and considerate, and truly listens to my thoughts and doesn't just dismiss me as some left-wing-liberal-commie-pinko-tree-hugging-queer-loving-wants-to-take-away-your-gun-flag-burning-baby-killing nut job. Though who knows? She may think that.
There's S., who first seemed to be my left-wing-liberal-commie-pinko-tree-hugging-queer-loving-wants-to-take-away-your-gun-flag-burning-baby-killing nut job, soul mate. Turns out, even thouhg she's got a fair share of hippie genetics (her mother was aghast that she became Catholic as an adult) she's fairly conservative in the realm of family and children. Her parents split up when she was a teenager and there was infidelity on both sides. She's been affected by that.
Then, there's L. Talk about a mixed bag. At ust 24, L. is pretty young to have a child the same age as mine. However, she wasn't an "ooops, I got pregnant" teen mom. She married her husband (who is my age) right after she turned 18 then got pregnant and had her daughter the same year. At the time, she had been offered a full music scholarship to a university in Seattle, but turned it down for marriage.
Oh, and I almost forgot M. Her parents are from Costa Rica. They emigrated to the states, when? I don't know. Her dad was on the U.S. Olympic shooting team of some sort. She's a former U.S. Women's Olympic Soccer Team member. How bout them apples? And know what? She has still never actually told me all this. Her dad, now in his 80's, and lively as ever, told me. She's the youngest of eight kids, and her oldest sibling is as old as my dad-- 64. She's shy too.
See? We're all different. It's fun. And we all married an equally eclectic group of men: an ecologist, two pilots, a college counselor-slash-mortgage broker-slash-educator, a custom home builder, and a Costco manager.
Nope, it's not Connecticut. But I bet there are just as many women with different stories and diffent lives, stumbling through their days, and if their lucky, finding each other and finding friendship.
It's true: Blessings are not just for the ones who kneel. I'm blessed.
"park closed"
1 hour ago