Playgroup

Today we met with Max's playgroup at Alcova Heights Park. The kids played, the moms chatted and everyone enjoyed lunch together on a blanket underneath the trees. I can't begin to explain how lucky I feel to have found this group. The hardest thing about having a first child two years ago was not the pregnancy, not the childbirth, not even the infant. It was the total transformation of my life. Scott will tell you that having children "ruins everything" and although I would not choose that terminology, I know what he means. Everything about your life changes. All of your anchors, your routines, are destroyed. Your very sense of who you are as a person is forever altered. Your primary responsibility is no longer your job, your relationship with your spouse or even yourself; it's your baby. This sort of seismic life shift is unsettling under the best of circumstances, and the adjustment is even more pronounced if you also quit your job, put your career on hold, and decide to stay home with this little creature that you hardly know but whom you love completely in an almost terrifying way.

That's why, to return to my initial point, I feel so lucky to have found this group of moms. We got to know each other when our babies were four or five months old. We've been through sleep training, solid foods, illnesses galore, first birthdays, second birthdays, arguments with spouses and big life decisions. We would probably never have come together as friends if it had not been for the single overwhelming commonality of our shared experience of first-time motherhood. Just to give you a sense, our group encompasses a lawyer, a Hill appropriations person, an editor, a physician's assistant, an English teacher, and a forensic scientist (CSI!). We also represent a variety of religious (and non religious) backgrounds and some starkly opposing political viewpoints (though we do a good job of not getting into this!). All of this is interesting, but it's really just background. What we are now are mothers -- women putting our children first, struggling with loneliness and uncertainty, and an endless stream of unsettling new experiences as we try to define our own place in the world and to help our children find theirs as well.

Thanks, Ladies, for being here in the trenches with me.