Just one more thing about the car. . .

Driving home from school yesterday June was screaming so hard that she gagged herself. While this might deter a lesser baby from continuing to scream, she was able to push through and keep screaming. I kept looking at her distorted reflection in the little mirror that hangs above her carseat and then over at Gracie who was sitting quietly in her own carseat, her bare feet on the passenger seat headrest, eating a popsicle. I went back and forth between the two of them (and, occasionally, the road) and tried to remember that once it was Gracie in that very same infant seat, in those very same flowery pants and polka-dot socks, screaming. And now she’s grown and mentally stable. Content, even. I tried to focus on that. When that stopped working I started eating cookies from the package of Newman’s Ginger Creams open on the seat next to me. I ate about sixty of them and June was still screaming and we still weren’t home. But finally we were, and after I had settled both the girls (boob and boob-tube, accordingly) I called Zanne and asked her if she would pick Grace up from school and bring her home for me. And Zanne said yes, yes of course and did I need her to pick Grace up on Mondays, even though Izzy isn’t even at school on Mondays? And I said no, I can handle Monday. But that’s how kind Zanne is. That’s how lucky I am.

So now I only have to do the drive once a week because Chris drives Gracie every morning (20 minutes out of her way!) and Zanne brings her home. And I am never, ever going to be able to eat another Ginger Cream cookie.

All New People

Last Friday Chris left the house at 5 am to catch a flight to Houston where she spent the next three days at a mediation. My weekend foray into single parenthood generated enough material for a dozen posts, but I think I’ll just leave it at this: I kept them both alive.

One thing I will say about the weekend is that as hard as it is to be a single parent, one should never, ever let their partner leave town during April vacation week. During April vacation week, at least where we live, everything is canceled. Everything is closed. Cumberland Farms and the emergency room are about the only places you can go and expect to see people working. This means that there was no standing Friday morning playdate, no Ballet class, no drop-in playgroup. No nada.

So we went to the park.

There were lots of wonderful things about the morning. It was sunny and warm, but not too warm. June howled herself to sleep on the way to the park, and stayed asleep while I transferred her from the car to her stroller and back again, two hour later. Gracie played happily by herself and with children she had never met before. I was proud of the way she moved her strong body, proud of the way she gently tried to engage other children.

The funny thing about the morning was the way it made me feel. There I was, out in the sunshine, my older child content to play without me, my baby sound asleep in her stroller, but I could not shake an anxious feeling. A lonely feeling. The playground was full of other mothers, but I didn’t know a single one of them. Gracie had chosen to play at the smaller of two playgrounds, so most of the children were barely two and their mothers all seemed to know each other in that way you know other mothers without really knowing them at all, from prenatal yoga, or tumbling class, or music together, or baby massage. But all of the mothers I knew and never really knew were nowhere to be seen. I was reminded of a scene from an old Anne Lamott novel where the young narrator’s uncle casts his arm out in front of him at a crowded park and says, “Just think, 100 years from now, all new people.”

There’s truly nothing new or interesting about the fact that everyday babies are born, and everyday babies start crawling and toddlers start talking and pre-schoolers start talking back. It’s a deep and endless ocean, motherhood is, wave after wave of us looking just like the wave before.

Unless it’s your wave. When it’s your wave it’s the first and the last. It crests higher, crashes louder, sprays colder than all the rest. Which is why you can’t expect to make it to the shore alive without the company of others. And while I spent years bemoaning the fact that playgroup and playground friendships were so superficial, I now understand their value. To be able to look around at women who are nursing or bouncing or chasing children while you are nursing and bouncing and chasing, well, it might not feed the hungry soul but at least it takes the edge off. And sometimes, if you are lucky enough and patient enough to hang in until the conversation winds its way from diaper covers to chicken soup recipes to favorite books (the ones without illustrations) all the way to politics and art and marriage, then you just might find yourself a friend of the truest bluest variety.

When I got home I called Patsy and told her how terribly much I missed her at the park. Then we listened to each other’s worries and she reminded me that June is only two months old and still incapable of acquiring bad sleep habits and I reminded her that her youngest will not breastfeed forever. This is what we do.  We listen and we hold out hope for the each other because sometimes it is the only way you can get a little hope for yourself. It is how we keep going. It is how we ride the wave.