Yesterday I took Sadie to our first infant play group. I say "our" because I now realize these things are as much for the mother as for the child. The babies can't talk, after all, so the mothers do. I was unprepared for it. I guess I've been at home so long, socializing only with Nick or with my family, that I wasn't ready for chatting with people in the "real" world.
To begin with, I showed up with sweat dripping in rivulets down my face from pushing Sadie's stroller up the hill to get to the place. Maybe I was dehydrated and unfocused, but I felt overwhelmed by having to present myself to these other mothers. Perhaps it was because their babies were 8 months or older, and they seemed more comfortable with their roles as mothers. Or maybe it was the competitive side of me, feeling that I needed to be the BEST mother there with the CUTEST and most advanced baby--nothing less would do. (Actually, I don't know if that's a competitive thing or a psychologically weird thing.) There is, of course, room for all sorts of babies and different kinds of moms, but something about the play group left me feeling....depressed? Alienated? Chagrined? I'm not sure what it was.
I do know that there is a real disconnect between watching someone else care for their child and the act of caring for my own. When I watch other parents with their children, the tedium of it overwhelms me, makes me feel sad. But with my own daughter, it really is different. My mom always said it's different when they're your own, and I see now that she is right. It's not that I think Sadie is more fascinating than other kids (though of course, she is), it's that the seemingly inconsequential things she does have context. Yesterday, Nick told me that she opened her mouth when he held the pacifier in front of her. A more mundane action you probably could not script, but the fact that she'd never done this before is what made it interesting to us.
Back at the play group, Sadie watched the other kids with a mix of awe and curiosity. She saw a little boy up close for the first time--the only other children she's played with are her cousins, all six of them girls. I, in turn, was fascinated watching her being fascinated. But I was self-conscious, too. What would the other mothers think of the way I held her? Of how I played with her? At one point, I put her down on the mat for some tummy time, and she squirmed and struggled to lift her head, leaving a huge wet spot of saliva where her mouth had been. I sensed the mothers looking on with horror at my having put her down on an unclean mat. Ooops. (My own personal germ theory is to expose her to things now so she grows up with a healthy immune system, but maybe the mat was too much?)
I can only imagine what it would be like to join a play group in Manhattan or gentrified Brooklyn. My experience of New York was that most people liked to tell you how wonderful whatever it is they were doing was. And I always took the bait, assuming that whatever someone told me was the literal truth and that whatever I was doing wasn't nearly as glamorous or cool or worthy. When it came to children, I imagine it would only get worse. It would be like a yoga class all over again, with me spending more time wondering how my downward facing dog stacked up to everyone else's than actually relaxing.
I don't know--is this healthy competition, or intense self-consciousness?
No comments:
Post a Comment