Women, not Mommies

A few nights ago, I went out to the Texas Tavern with some classmates, most of whom were women in or around my age group. We drank beer, talked shop, and related our career history, where we'd traveled, where we were from, and finally, told a few off-color jokes. Toward the end of the evening, I found out that two of the women were married, and three had children. I must admit, these are not the kind of women I pegged as having spawned. They talked about intelligent things, they knew which bands were touring, they could describe the hellishness of finding a cross-city bus in London. At no time did anyone fret about the babysitter needing to leave by ten or call home to make sure little Josie's hands weren't in the disposal. These women - who were also mothers - had rich, rewarding, interesting lives, and they didn't feel like they'd sacrificed one damned thing.

Say ... what's going on here?

As I've grown past my carefree college days, when my female friends and I saw the world as an endless source of lifetimes and opportunities, I've seen most of them change into people I no longer know, much less resemble. Back in the day, I knew that my best girl friend had a crush on Steve Perry from Journey, that she had aspirations to become a songwriter/recording artist, that she had a big, beautiful voice, that she had some strong ideas about Pro-Choice politics; now the only thing she tells me about is the negative social consequences of her child's ADD. To wit, girls ultimately grow up into one of two things: Women or Mommies. I had drinks at the Tavern with Women. But every so often, I'll phone up an old, long-neglected friend who has since become a Mommy, and it reminds me just how lucky I am.

Mommies are endearing, diligent, boring (bored?) creatures. Their lives revolve solely around one thing: their children. If they talk about anything else - what they're going over the holidays, what restaurant they went to last week - it is in the context of the trevails of parenthood. "I want the kids to spend more time with my husband's father, poor thing, he's on his last legs." "We went to Cipollina, but you know, i was disappointed that they didn't have any booster chairs, little Billy can't quite reach the grown-ups table." Mommies have every detail of their children's life history memorized, and they will tell you about it in great detail, from a reaction to the first booster shot to the smell of their poop ("a little like pumpkin pie") to the musical pottie chair that worked well with little Gabby, but not so much with younger brother Tad. No one wants to hear about that, not even other Mommies. I'm convinced that when two Mommies get together, their dialogue becomes like that of autistic children, where interaction is played out on a thin surface. It's a group exercise in speaking adult language so they don't automtically list into babytalk in the presence of non-Mommies.

My own mother straddled the fence between Woman and Mommy until I left for college, at which point she retired and had way too much time on her hands. She was a career nurse, there by the grace of God, because otherwise, she might have been unbearable in my earlier years. After she retired, she focused exclusively on me. It drove me insane and made me realize why my best friend in high school was so high strung and nervous whilst growing up with her own hausfrau Mommy. What time Mrs. C. didn't spend in the kitchen was spent perenially critiquing the kids still living in the house, until the only one left standing was my best friend. Her senior year in high school was not a lot of giggles. Her misery made me paranoid. What if my mother quit work and turned into a similar creature? I didn't want a Mommy who bragged about my accomplishments to the neighbors or complained about my failures to the family. I wanted one who was a savvy political converationist, who could describe her latest watercolor techniques, one filled with excitement for her own life, and not for the life of her only child. But when Mom retired, that is not what I got. And that was the time when I really needed her to be her own person.

Speaking from experience, Mommies make for very boring, frustrating conversation partners. I would adore to visit my mother and just for once, I'd like for us to talk about the sibling rivalry she experienced between she and her sisters. About the madcap adventures she had in nursing school. About the handsome doctor who broke her hear and the famous writer who courted her as she nursed him back to health. I want to know my mother's favorite movies, records, books, foods, and clothing designers. I want her to have an opinion, I want her to argue with me about something other than the financial profile of the man I'm dating. I would love for my mother to see herself as complete, whole, and worthy, aside and apart from her spawn. After some long, hard soul searching, I realize that it because of this that I haven't reached my potential. When you're made to feel like the center of the universe just because you breathe in and out and not because of a particular talent (or even because you may be an interesting peron), it breeds indolence and the attitude that heaven will somehow provide to its special little children. Which as we know is a bunch of horseshit.

When I was married to Corey Corporate, I was introduced to his married couples friends. The female components were natch, all Mommies. In fact, it didn't seem like they were ever people apart and aside of their relationship to their children. I listened to them talk with their husbands, watched how they interacted, and it seemed impossible to me that they ever had a discussion about anything other than college funds, bad report cards, and whether their sixth-grade daughter is getting horseback riding lessons this year. I don't want that to happen to Jon and me. I love and respect him too much as an individual to make him turn into a stoic, droning thing that makes all the big decisions and carries all the credit cards. Mr. Corporate would have loved me to turn into a Mommy. That way, he could be assured that I'd be too spawn-obsessed to notice that we lived in some hellish small town in the scant sticks of West Texas or in a compound in an unfriendly Mideastern sandpile. Sorry. No can do.

Sometimes I think I'd like to have a kid with Jon. He would beg to differ, but he'd make an excellent father. He's patient, he's interesting, he does't keep a regular schedule, and he remembers very vividly what it was like to be a kid himself. He's the kind of guy who'd pick up on the spur of the moment and move us all to the trendy side of Manhattan, and the quality of the public schools or whether there's a kids' park would not even be discussed. Most importantly, Jon is not a Daddy (the male equivalent of a Mommy). His existence is even more vibrant than my own; I trust that he'd live first for himself and in that way, his happiness would flow into his children on a very organic level. I too know that I will never become a Mommy. Married friends have told me that it's different when they're your kids, but I beg long and hard to disagree. I have spent possibly years of my life watching my friends obsess over their offspring only to be bewildered and bereft when they finally go off to school and come into their own. The key to being a good parent is to live on your own terms and be exactly who you want to be. It's like any kind of relationship - unless you take care of yourself first, you cannot take care of anyone else in a healthy way.

My child, if I have one, may be a talented achiever, and then again, he or she might sell handmade tie-dye outside a trailer park. But what they will or will not become won't be dependent on my obsessing about them. I learned that from my friends who are first interesting people and mothers second. Know what? The kids, like their mothers, are truly awesome.