My kids are Awesome

That is all.

Bus Stop Confessions

I have a confession. I hate the bus stop. Hate it.

I like the other moms enough, the kids are nice, and I like seeing Emily run around with her friends, buzzing with excitement for the school day. And it's rare these days, now that I'm working, to even be home at bus time. But I feel so awkward and apart, always. And it's more than being twenty years younger than the other parents, or not living in the right sub-development, or driving the right minivan. I go from being competent and confident in a world of politics to navigating a field of land mines where the caution signs are written in a foreign language. I don't want to seem like I'm not participating, but I can't muster the energy to participate. I feel like I should want to fit in, but I don't. I feel like Ian's afforded a certain distance being not only a dad, but a stay-at-home dad. The women joke, when I do go, that I shouldn't worry, that the baby is dressed every day, as if having been born a woman somehow makes us carriers for the baby-dressing gene. "Good God I hope so" I want to reply, but instead I laugh nervously.

I met with my former boss, a state representative, last weekend. She's a strong woman, an advocate, and a wonderful mother and grandmother. She told me that she attended a luncheon with 800 women recently. "800 women in one room, you'd think I had something in common with one of them", she told me "But I didn't, and you'll come to realize over the years that you won't either".

I took Emily to school late today, and I walked Emily to her class, smelling Elmer's Glue and sweaty kids, walking hand in hand, my heels clicking loudly in the empty hall. I might not understand this world, I might not fit in here, and I might not ever. I might have become a parent by accident, but as I watch Emily bound up the stairs to her classroom, I realize that I might not ever know what homework is due, and I'll never volunteer in her classroom, but she's okay. And I'll have to work on being okay with that too.

I get back in my car, turn on some Nine Inch Nails and speed down the freeway to another day.