I did something very unusual for me last week: I scheduled a playdate with another family. Oscar had made friends with the oldest boy at a co-op function a couple of weeks ago, and I knew the mother just well enough not to be intimidated by the possibility of trying to make conversation, so I swallowed my social anxiety and drove down to Bloomington for the afternoon. At least twice on my way there I had an attack of "gosh I hope I don’t really embarrass myself by saying something stupid" but of course I had a perfectly lovely time, had to tear myself and the kids away, and nearly made Oscar late for his catechism class.
Thinking over the encounter, I noticed something. We’re new-ish, maybe 2 years, as members of our bursting-at-the-seams parish. I haven’t had time to make real friendships, it takes me a while. But there are a handful of families I gravitate towards, people I’d like to get to know better. I could tell you right away which ones I mean because I remember names, ages of children, things like that. At a gathering of many of the mothers I instinctively seek these women out because I really hate mingling and with these I’ve already done at least some of the hard work of making small talk. Or maybe because I genuinely like them. The family we visited yesterday was one of these.
I realized that all these mothers have two things in common, the ones I feel I could be friends with maybe, if I got to know them better, the ones I find myself saying hello to. The first is that they all have more children than me (the number 5 pops up frequently). The second is that I keep assuming they are about my age — I mean, I can really tell I’m subconsciously identifying with them somehow as "this is a person who is like me, whose experience and history are similar to mine"– and then some conversation about pop culture will reveal that actually they are five to eight years older than me. I’ll realize that their high school years were late-eighties, not early-nineties. And I am always surprised.
Not that the age difference matters too much. Homeschoolers are more aware than most of the societal obsession with age-grouping, and of its errors. (Although in mother-years, we might expect a deeply felt difference between 30 and 40.) No, I just find it remarkable (a) that I keep gravitating towards, and identifying with, slightly older moms who have a few more children than I, and (b) that I keep being surprised to discover the age difference. Why do I do this?
At first I thought, maybe I’m instinctively seeking mentors? But it doesn’t feel that way, and anyway, you’d think I would feel more like "O wise one, enlighten me" and less like "hey, you’re like me, maybe we could get along." And then I thought, maybe I’m fascinated with bigger families, since I didn’t come from one? But that doesn’t seem right either. But as I think about the families, I realize that for most of them, the oldest child is in the 9-10-11-year-old range. And I think that’s the key to understanding it.
I’ve written lots about my "tribe" — the other families that we spend so much time with. It wouldn’t be far off to say we’ve helped each other raise our children. For seven years I’ve spent two days a week, and many weekend hours too, with these other families. It so happens that the two other mothers I spend the most time with are all about the same age, within 2 years, and I am in the middle. And the oldest child in our tribe, who is not mine, is nearly ten. There’re 10 children in all. You know what? I think I instinctively am gravitating towards mothers whom I perceive as having a similar level of experiencing and knowing children. Obviously I am not the parent of ten children, I am the mother of three and I happen to be getting to know seven others really, really well. Maybe it’s because of these other children who are such a strong presence in my life that I instinctively seek out the mothers of more children than I have. They "feel" more like me than other mothers-of-three do.
Well, that’s an awful lot of meta-analysis, and it definitely isn’t the only reason why I had such a good time, and felt so comfortable, and hardly anxious at all, while visiting yesterday with my children. Sometimes I think too much! Now I can turn to being anxious about reciprocating the invitation…
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