Someone slipped a card in my mailbox
It was a business card, "Island Reproductive Services"
On the card was a post it that read, "Hi Nanci, this place is wonderful and I recommend them if you decide to go through with it , Steph"
First I was delighted to get a personal note at work, and not a "I need from you" note. This was some unsolicited advice from a colleague.
Can I explain how this note made me feel ? Nobody really talks to me at work, well REALLY talks to me. And I am just as much to blame. I am too busy to make real friends here, and I don't really have much in common with them. I like politics, stuff I am reading, crazy single life stuff. They like weddings, American Idol and kids. We don't really talk to each other, with the exception of student issues, or the occasional how are you.
So I was delighted when I got the note, seemed almost like an invitation to join the club, the I have children club.
The fact that I was even considering it , gave me a whole bunch of new friends at work. Not to mention compliments.
"I think you would make a wonderful mom"
" I hear you want to be a mom, that's awesome"
" I hope it happens for you, you deserve it, I am pulling for you"
Ohh my fucking god, I thought these people hated me, they never talk to me, now they wish me nothing but good ??
Is this all I have to do to make friends at work, have a baby ?
I felt like I was in 7th grade again and the cool clique let me join their gang. Walking the halls, giving that secret mom handshake, being invited over to the big lunch table, putting nice notes in each other's mailboxes. Going to be a mom was going to be fun , I was going to be cool again !!! I can't wait to go home and tell my family about my day at school.
"Hey Ma- guess what , the kids(teachers ) at school let me join their group today, I am going to be a mother !"
You'll always be in my club... baby or no baby. A baby doesn't justify their behavior towards you.
ReplyDeleteIf the day should come when you tell me your having a baby, be sure to give me the names and numbers of all of them and I will invite them to the baby shower. I'll be sure to snub them and you be sure to take all their presents.
On the opposite side of the pole, sometimes being a Mommy doesn't get you invites either. When I ask why I wasn't invited, the usual response is... "You wouldn't have gone anyway". So just be prepared for that one my friend.
xxx
You convey the sense of the outsider here really well, Nanci. You also show how inane grown people can act when confronted with the other. It goes to show how threatened people are by someone who chooses to differ in lifestyle, intellectual pursuits, whatever.
ReplyDeleteIn re-reading this, I realize how much I like your opening sentence. It conveys this sense of the forbidden or something clandestine. Nice.
ReplyDeleteNanci, nice...i can relate to this as far as being on the 'outside'. I don't give a damn now, i know the true folks in my life will accept me wherever my life takes me. I learned all to recently the last few years who my friends are after losing Anthony. People are afraid of (as DaisyDarlington stated) the OTHER. *(hey, don't thread on their 'normalcy')*LOL And as mald put, baby or no baby you should be accepted anyways for just the good person you are. -s-
ReplyDelete