Bad Parent: Sisterhood, Schmisterhood
In those first months, I wanted to talk to anyone but other new moms.
by Kim Brooks
May 15, 2008
The other new moms were amazingly sweet, amazingly welcoming, and amazingly able to maintain a three-hour conversation on the benefits and disadvantages of soy formula. I participated enthusiastically in this discussion, just as, once, I had participated enthusiastically in discussions of the politics of the Middle East or the impact of global warming. Then I drove home in a stupor, feeling as though I'd spent the afternoon watching soap operas and eating Twinkies. The next group wasn't much better. Nor the next. At that point, I'd spent fifty-something dollars on pastries and Perrier. I'd learned more than I had ever wanted to learn about cradle cap and sex after episiotomies and breast pumps and nanny background-check services.
My breaking point occurred one drizzly afternoon when the baby and I were on our way to a group. Instead of heading to the host's apartment, I found myself driving to my favorite bar, enjoying a glass of wine and a few minutes of reading with Roscoe snoozing in his stroller. There was a gay couple at a nearby table discussing Dennis Kucinich's candidacy, a woman sitting by herself at another table reading Death in Venice. Not a single word about bouncers or strollers or acid reflux or vaccinations or nipple soreness. It was beautiful — like listening to the ocean at night.
At that moment, I realized two things: First, I realized that new moms kind of suck. People generally aren't at their sharpest and most engaging when they're getting twenty minutes of sleep each night. Also, they're usually so busy trying to figure out how to survive the day, they don't have much energy left to contemplate, much less discuss, the world beyond the cradle.
What I needed most of all in those early months was to be around people whose company I enjoyed, regardless of their parental status.
The second thing I learned was this: just because two people are both new moms, that doesn't mean they'll necessarily have anything else in common. What I needed most of all in those early months was to be around people whose company I enjoyed, regardless of their parental status, people who would talk to me about the things I used to talk about, who would help me remember that in addition to being a new mother, I was still myself.
I ordered another glass of wine and resolved to call up a single, childless friend that night, to let her regale me with tales of hook-ups and art-show openings and spontaneous weekend getaways. Perhaps Roscoe wouldn't enjoy it quite as much as drooling on other babies' toys while I discussed his sleep cycles and digestion. Then again, some of my earliest memories involve feeling bored and exasperated with the confines of little-kid-intended activities. I was certainly the sort of obnoxiously precocious kid who preferred Stanley Kubrick to Disney, California rolls to chicken fingers. Maybe Roscoe felt the same. Maybe he thought, in his little baby way, that one new mom was more than enough.
Article photo: Grant MacDonald
©2008 Kim Brooks and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Kim Brooks has written for Glimmer Train, One Story, Epoch
and the Missouri Review. She also writes non-fiction for
The Crier. She lives in Chicago with her husband and son. |
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