Alone in a Crowd
I'm the only one who had kids.
by L.J. Williamson
November 21, 2007
The transition was a rough one. I often felt lonely, angry, and jealous of my untethered friends who had jobs to go to and really compelling reasons to wear things that weren't sweatpants. I remember feeling as if the world had left me behind, like I was stuck in a 1950s housewife time warp. One day, at my nadir of self-pity, as I wondered what women in the '50s did to cope with the crushing sense of isolation that staying at home full-time can provoke, I realized that they probably didn't have a crushing sense of isolation, because damn near everyone they knew was doing the same thing they were. Society wasn't as fragmented by the pesky freedom of choice we have so much more of today. If a '50s housewife phoned a friend, that friend would probably answer, because she didn't have the Pill and didn't have her calls rolled over to voice mail because she had a huge deadline to meet. How great those women had it, I thought. Sure, they were shackled to their stoves, married to men who'd never dream of changing a diaper, they had no real career options and no reliable birth control, but at least they had friends who were home in the afternoon!
Okay, get a grip on yourself, I finally told myself. Feeling jealous of your friends is unhealthy, and feeling jealous of women in the '50s is ridiculous. Besides, I love my friends and I hate poodle skirts.
Slowly, I began to accept my fate as my group's designated breeder, and began to more fully appreciate what a blessing it was to have the privilege of staying home with my children. Besides, my friends were who they were, and they weren't going to change, and I wouldn't want them to anyway. And I realized that even if I did have a bunch of parent friends, you can only have the same conversations about fevers, potty training and playdate traumas so many times. And I really love the fact that, I began to accept my fate as my group's designated breeder.because they're usually the only children around, my kids get showered with attention and gifts from their numerous aunts and unkies. Who else would my friends give all of those unwanted Drinky Crow comics, Episode I action figures, Invader Zim lunchboxes and videos of The Brak Show to?
I'm also very grateful for those occasions when I can accept an invitation to an all-adults party, because those outings do me a world of good. I like still feeling connected to the world I inhabited B.C. (before children). Usually, it'll be somewhere around 2:30 or 3:00 a.m., when I'm fighting to keep my eyes open, that one or more of my friends is drunk enough to have reached the I-love-you-man stage, they're also kind enough to add, "and I love your kids!" Then they slur adorable things like, "Too damn many hardcore neo-con fundamentalist types are having babies all of the time, so I'm glad people like you guys who aren't total idiots are doing it too." Aww shucks, that's sweet.
That's what I get for signing on with an alliance of carousing, freedom-loving, commitment-ambivalent friends. Parents or not, I wouldn't trade them for the world.
©2007 L.J. Williamson and Nerve Media
About the Author
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L.J. Williamson is a writer from Los Angeles. Her complaints have been printed in The Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, and Utne, to name a few. She lives with her husband, Monkey Man, and their two children, Fifi Bird
and Sugar Guy. Her website is ljwilliamson.com. |
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