Playdating

I was at a mommy’s playgroup the other day with Drew in tow. I was there mostly with women I didn’t know and a few new fledgling friends who had invited me. I pulled up to the sleek split-level ranch-style home and knocked on the door. It was strange, this door. It was white wood, seamlessly embedded into the equally white wall with no windows and no doorbell. My knock sounded inconclusive, irrelevant like no one inside would ever hear it, like I was a little child knocking on the front door of the White House.

Just then in my moment of supreme self-doubt, I happened to glance to my right, down a pebbled pave way bordering the side of the very white house, and noticed another portico hanging over two richly-carved double doors. With a glowing doorbell. Well. This was more like it. I supposed the other door was meant to throw off the vacuum salesmen.

The house inside was, unsurprisingly, white. Everyone inside was on the floor in the living room, under the shadow of a grand piano that stood stark against wall-to-wall windows that overlooked a bluff. Yes, we in Fort Worth do have bluffs. On the coffee table, a plate of artisan cheese (thank you, Dean and Deluca, for that term) and fruit sat untouched. On one of the coffee tables, I should say; the living room was big enough for two. A level slightly above us served as the formal dining space; down below were two seating areas anchored in the center by the piano. Another level led up to the entryway and down another hall where I supposed beautiful white bedrooms were situated one after another like clean teeth. The house was evidently built for hosting cocktails for about twenty intelligent, childless, people. The irony was, amidst all this white and clean lines, about ten babies and toddlers wobbled around like amoebas in a sterile Petri dish, threatening the adultish sanctity of the place.

I joined the circle on the floor sheepishly, like a sorority sister late for her initiation. But I was greeted warmly, and Drew found a block to chew on. After a few moments, I perceived the radiating sensation of hot perspiration gathering behind my knees and running down the back of my hamstrings--very unpleasant when you’ve just applied self-tanner. I concluded that the wall-to-wall windows were only mere suggestions to the heat of the Texas sun that it might want to stay away; and that we could all potentially burst into flames at any moment.

At that moment, one of the women was gushing about her new gourmet baby food-making book. “They have this wonderful tilapia and asparagus dish” is all I heard before the Guilt Tingles started dancing in my chest. I looked around the circle; the mothers in attendance were all very warm and kind and sophisticated and stylish, and were nodding approvingly, like they too were eager to run out and learn the nuances of seasoning fruit-de-mer for baby. These women belonged to the house--like accessories--fulfilling its gracious prophecy, so to speak. I was starting to feel a little frayed, a little fat, a little fake-tanned.

But at that moment I made eye contact with another woman—the owner of the lovely home—and realized with jubilation that she, too, was an out-of-the-jar mom. We shared our dark secret in the silence of that suspended moment. When moms of similar guilt complexes make a connection, it’s like the meeting of two notes in harmony that no one else hears but the women themselves. We get each other, even if the only thing we share is our failings as mothers. Hey, was it possible? Maybe I belonged at this house, too.

Drew's Preceding Hairline

I was at the pediatrician’s today waiting for the doctor to look at Drew who has conspicuously been playing with his left ear for two days, and just being all-round first-rate Fuss Ball. I surveyed the waiting room where several other moms and snotty-nosed babies were waiting, like so many munchkins, for their turn to see the Wizard--the Wonderful Wizard of Shnoz. There was an eleven-week old, a four month old, and a five month old. All bald, like Right Said Fred. Every last one of them.

All the baldness got me thinking. Had we missed something? Drew is neither bald nor hairy—he is somewhere in the middle. He waits in the purgatory of hair, if only his mother would pray in the rest of it. (Or pray it away, since bald is apparently the new black.)

Most babies we are friends with are also bald. I too was a bald baby—till I was two—and that was back when hair was in and bald was out. But things have changed; now babies prefer aerodynamics to fabulous 80’s seagulls. It fits with the prevailing culture of cutting excess, going green and being Buddhist. Throw an orange robe around their little pudgy bodies and call them Oprah.

At the beginning, Drew’s hair started coming in a straight line proceeding from the back top of his head forward like a Mohawk laying flat. It then filled in down the back of his head, except for a patch where he has slept it bald. The sides have yet to grown in. Now, the long strands growing straight down the center are almost touching his eyelashes when combed straight, so I have been forced to give him little 40-something lawyer comb-overs. Who knew Drew would already be getting a taste of middle age? He has reverse male-pattern baldness: a preceding hairline.

I don’t know that he really cares, but he might sooner than I thought. Hair is strangely important these days, and increasingly among the very young. I saw a seven-year-old kid the other day with highlights, for gracious’ sakes, and a boy at that. We are all becoming more and more aware of ourselves now that reality TV has held up a mirror to us common folk. Even men are more enlightened, especially about women’s hair issues. I got a complement last week in my fourth grade Sunday school class from a dad who really loved my hair color. And the man was heterosexual. (Cue Louis Armstrong: What a wonderful world!)

So I wonder, when will Drew first see himself in the mirror? I mean, really see and evaluate. He will of course find that he has more important grooming issues to attend to before getting the new George Cooney Caesar cut and lowlights. The drool, for instance. The unsavory eye crusties. The mucus in general.

But I really hope he is as blissfully unaware of his appearance as long as possible. It’s one area in which we could all be a little more ignorant.