A confession

I'm going to say something that I'm not terribly proud of. This may just serve to reinforce my strangeness in your mind, and I'm okay with that. I think. But I digress.

I'll just go ahead and say it:  I find a lot of other moms insufferable. I never really had occasion for these feelings to surface until I did the preschool pick up and drop off this year with Will and after nearly eight months of it, I can honestly say that I still think this, unfortunately. Pretty frequently.

Now, I will be the first to speak up in defense of moms in general, the working sort or the stay-at-home sort. I've never bought into the whole "Mommy wars" thing that nefariously pits moms in the workforce against moms who stay at home. Never, not once, since I've had Will have I had a working mother dismiss me or act superior in any way, shape or form. I like to think that women in general, and mothers in particular, have so, so much more in common than any differences between us. We are, regardless of race or socioeconomic status or political identification, in possession of a great many commonalities. We are multitaskers and caretakers and friends and allies and fiercely loyal and capable and competent. We all want the best for our families, even though "the best" is a relative term, I suppose.

That said, though, there is a specific type of mother (or father, really) that I just can't for the life of me make myself want to be around. The kind that is constantly so on, so happy, so ready to praise her genius child's every effing move. The chirpy kind, whose voice seems to carry miles and miles to my eardrums, boring seemingly permanent holes there. Seriously. I don't know how they do it. I realize that it's not in my personality to be effusive in any way and I don't begrudge others who are more emotive than I ever will be. What I take issue with is just how crazy it all is. No one could possibly be that happy, that excited, that enthralled with their children, that often.

And not only that, I can't help but wonder what effect this will have on our kids. I realize that I am in no way a perfect mother and that I never will be. (I could list my faults and mistakes here but it would be so long and so boring that even I would lose interest. Trust me.) I realized early on in my first year in the classroom that praise in any form is to be used sparingly and only when it's truly deserved. A teacher can't possibly praise all of the students equally in her class on any given day, especially for things that really aren't that big of a deal (i.e. putting their attendance stick in the right container at the beginning of the day or putting library books back in their correct bins or leaving notes or permission slips in the right pocket in the hanging organizer on the wall, etc.). So my takeaway lesson there was to never praise the expectation. Some things truly warranted praise but they were a bit fewer and far(er) in between. So the kids in my classroom always knew that, when I pointed out something that they did well, it was (a) deserved and (b) pretty exceptional.

There's a boy in Will's classroom who is the son of one of these mothers. She's younger (well, around my age, which appears to be young as far as the parents at Will's school go) and she makes such a big deal about everything her son does. For instance, the kids had gone out on a "fall walk" around the school and collected some fall items like leaves and acorns in a paper bag that was sent home (don't ask why--I would rather they have been thrown away but maybe I'm the one who's being weird here). This mom took a peek inside her son's bag and exclaimed, all wide-eyed and animated,"Oh, Billy, just look at these TREASURES!" I was, in the meantime, trying to put Will's shoe back on him after he inexplicably took it off in the hall as we were putting his coat on, with Laura sitting on the dirty floor between my legs and it took everything in my being to not say, "Really? Your precious kid found the exact same shit my kid did and, moreover, it's going to be all over our floor if I don't find a way to discreetly dispose of it before we get home." (This is the same three-year-old who still refers to his father as "Da da" so there's more than a little bit of babying going on there.)

I just fear that this type of constant excitement and "you're the best thing ever in the whole wide world" is creating a world of kids who expect to be patted on the back for everything, who can't handle any sort of adversity or can only handle it with the assistance of their parents. I realize, though, that some of this enthusiasm is probably done for the benefit of other parents and (hopefully?) isn't the norm when they're home  and that I may be a little overly critical here.

However. And I'm getting back to my original point here, eventually, I promise. I stand there three days a week and am privy to conversations between these mothers and they just make me cringe. I know that they're only short snippets of conversations and that these same mothers (I can only hope) have discussions about more important matters with their spouses, maybe, or with their close friends. But seriously. If I have to listen to one more mom prattle on about (a) the minutiae of her exercise routine or (b) the latest extracurricular activity sweet Sally is in these days I may go crazy. (Sidenote:  The vast, vast majority of moms at Will's school stay at home with their kids. And if they don't, they have nannies. The vast, vast majority of these mothers also dress  very similarly to me, go to the same music classes with their infants, take them to the same places during the summer, etc. So I guess it's not surprising that they seem to discuss the same things over and over and over. I've become a cliche myself, I'm afraid.)

Some days I feel like I'm in some sort of alternate reality, where I will never fit in (and don't ever really want to, honestly). I kind of imagine the labor and delivery nurse handing these moms their newly-born, swaddled sweet baby saying, with a sinister shine in her eyes, "Here's your baby. Now give me your soul." Yes, being a mother is the most defining role I'll ever have. It's the most important. It's the one that I enjoy most (or don't enjoy most, depending on the day). But it's not all of who I am. It never will be. There is more to me, to any mom, than what she does with her children and what her children may grow up to be and do. We are complex people who have significant thoughts and ideas, who have opinions on important things, who are capable and strong and intelligent. We are more than that woman with the annoying voice praising our four- year-old for knowing that it's lunchtime after the school day is over. I hope, at least. I hope.