Each time I see a mother, especially one with a child or two under four, I want to run over and give her a cookie. Not her (always adorable) child a cookie, but her. The child's strong, capable, beautiful mama. I feel like I have an unspoken bond with all mothers of young children. We should all get together for the world's biggest cocktail party and toss back a few martinis, on the house.
You haven't slept more than five hours straight since the constant nightly bathroom trips brought on by the third trimester, I want to say, and you still look fabulous. Sure, all of your dry-clean-only sweaters have been baptized with spit-up, but that's just a part of the rocky induction into the sisterhood of mamas. Maybe you haven't had your hair cut in six months, or your belly's oozing over the top of your jeans like mine is, or you forgot to brush your teeth yet again, but you're still on top of things. Hey, you got out of the house on time, and everyone's wearing a matching pair of socks! Oh, and here's a piece of cinammon gum to cover that sour breath until you get a chance to brush your teeth.
Because I'm afraid that my fellow mothers will think I'm crazy, I rarely go up to them in the mall or the grocery store and offer over-the-top compliments or stealth hugs. I am not a person who likes hugs that much, other than those from my baby or my man or my own mother, yet I kind of want to have a group hug with all the mothers I see at Target, despite the deep invasion of personal space that would bring on. I understand that such unsolicited contact could really freak some people out - it would freak me out if a random woman ran up to me, wrapped me in her arms, and told me I'm doing an impressive job raising my child. While I have kept my hands to myself, it's been surprising how often I do end up talking to fellow parents on the street. I'm more on the shy side, and really took that whole don't talk to strangers thing they repeated in preschool to heart, yet I find myself engaged in conversations about baby socks or dirty diapers with fellow parents I've never seen before all the time.
The world seems friendly to me now that I have a baby. We're all sleep deprived. We're all just trying to take care of our children in the best way we know how, in a way that keeps our families safe and healthy. We all have moments in which we wonder how we're going to be able to do this, to get through the newest challenge, and then we figure out a way and we make it through. We're trying our best to be loving and resourceful and keep our sanity, all while remembering to feed the dog and buy the diapers and balance the checkbook and fight off diaper rash and read a story and make something relatively healthy and delicious for dinner. I feel like all of us parents are in it together, like we are the world, and we have the children, and we can make it a better place.
I'm sorry I had to bring up a song co-written by Lionel Ritchie. Please don't smack me. I'm so cheery about mothers that I kind of want to smack myself. And fathers! I love all you dads, too, especially the one I saw juggling a baby on one hip and a coffee cup in the other, or the one I ran into while walking the dog with Axel who talked to me for a good fifteen minutes about the merits of various front and back carriers and the one he and his wife picked out. I confess that I feel a bit more of a bond with mothers who I don't know and really have no reason to feel deeply connected to than I do with fathers, perhaps since we see one another juggling children and diaper bags in the ladies' room, but I still recognize that you fathers are pretty fantastic yourselves. And don't even get me started on my adoration of our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers, or I might have to be locked up in a rainbow-painted room with a dozen caffeinated candy stripers, all the jelly beans we can eat, and "What the World Needs Now" playing as The Care Bears Movie shows on a flat-screen TV.
I have romantic notions of inviting all the parents in a two mile radius from my house - who I'd ID by the strollers on their porches - over for a playdate/brownie and margarita fest, but then I'll remember that I've got to fold a load of laundry or clean up the cat's vomit or play airplane with Axel and let him drool all over my face, so I haven't gotten around to setting a date yet. It would be great, though - we'd have a big bouncy castle in the backyard, which I would test out myself before any of the other families arrived, and a huge vat of my sister-in-law's delicious gazpacho, along with mountains of guacamole. The babies would crawl around on the grass (meticulously cleared of dog poop for the occasion), and the rose bushes would be in bloom. Unfortunately, we don't have any rose bushes, and I've got a feeling that I exceeded the bouncy castle weight limit at age twelve.
Maybe it's all that bond-promoting oxytocin that's floating around in my bloodstream that makes me turn into a walking early Mother's Day greeting card. Maybe it's because it's springtime, and Axel's been drawn to the blooming daffodils we pass on our walks, and the weather's flip-flopping between sunny 75 degree perfection and overcast and snowy. I know there are parents out there who I wouldn't really want to invite over for a playdate, and there are parents who feel the same way about me. My sunny view of all parents of young children probably won't last long enough for me to get it together to host a neighborhood-wide baby party. I figure by the time Axel's five I'll have scaled back my plans and hosted a barbecue, catered by my husband and Whole Foods, for the fellow parents living on my block. But while I've still got the sunshine spirit, I just wanted all you parents out there to know that I love you, I admire you, and, anytime you want a cookie and I have one, I'll split it with you. I'd even give you the bigger half.
