This was an original post for LA Moms Blog on November 4, 2008. SV Moms Group was acquired by Technorati so I post my archives here on Fridays.
It’s 10PM on turn-back-the-clock night so it feels not like 11PM, but like the dead of night. The kitchen counter is stacked high with dirty dishes and the revelation that I do NOT in fact have service for 12, not even a full service for 8. Many dishes and forks and spoons have gone the way of missing socks during my 6 years of marriage and 3.5 years of child-rearing. Tea cups doubled as dessert dishes this evening, and I am grateful that at least I did not pass jelly jars off as water goblets.
It was my turn to host book club tonight, and despite the high chaos of a household with two children under four, my guests praised the food I made, the cleanliness of my house, and the perfect cuteness of my children during their brief appearance.
In attendance were the following archetypes of women:
-a former CIA employee who now doubles as a yoga instructor and an international nuclear disarmament agent
-a music industry agent’s right hand
-a LAUSD facilities operator
-a doctor who moonlights as a chef
-the esteemed volunteer coordinator of a local suicide hotline, also a mother
-another yoga instructor slash world traveler
-um, me. Part-time writer, part-time video production coordinator, full-time mom, moonlights as a ghost of her former self (ask me about my recent trip to London to interview a famous movie star!)
We meet almost-monthly. We pick books that are de rigeur (Eat, Pray, Love) or obscure (The Japanese Garden) or even adolescent (Coraline). We serve meals inspired by our book choices. Whoever picks the book hosts the group that month. We’ve met in Northridge, Hollywood, Los Feliz, Beverly Hills, Pasadena, and Hermosa Beach. We start off talking about the book, but then the conversation wanders, and we wind up talking about everything. And children are interesting, but not that much.
In my life that seems so small, that is dictated by when the last time the 3.5-year-old used the toilet or whether the possibly-allergic-to-dairy 18-mont-old has snatched his brother’s sippy cup full of milk this morning, meeting with my book club is like a breath – no, a blast – of fresh air. It reminds me that my life is important, but it is part of a larger life, one that does not involve diapers or Dora the Explorer. When I said goodbye and kissed and hugged at the door, one of the women said “Is that a toothbrush on the floor in your hallway?” Indeed, it was a battery-powered Red Power Ranger toothbrush that had somehow been catapulted 20 feet from the bathroom. “What? You don’t have those in your house?” I asked.
Sometimes I envy them, these women who casually toss off comments like “I think I’ll go home and take a bath and have a glass of wine” like that’s so easy and up to them. Like their schedule is theirs alone to dictate. Oh, wait. It is. This isn’t my mommy group I’m meeting with. In this group, my life choices have made me the minority. At one point during dessert, my 18-month-old did a post-bath streak through the house, buttocks jiggling, grin glowing, playing peek-a-boo with my guests one by one. Nobody said it out loud, but I detected the faintest glimmer of jealousy across a face or two.
“The grass is always greener, girls,” I thought. Because I’m the one who has to clean a mountain of dishes before I go to bed late, only to wake mere hours later to dole out sippy cups, to wipe yet another ass, to Velcro another shoe, to hold a soft, sweet face in my hands, to bury my nose in a headful of curls and inhale the scent of Johnson & Johnson’s Oatmeal Bath Lotion before the sun has even kissed the morning sky.
Who’s jealous now?
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