I’ve joined a secret society

Last weekend, I took the Bee to an outdoor festival, and I have some bad news to report.

It’s official. I’ve turned into my mother.

When I was a kid, I could never understand why my mother talked to other people in public, and as I got older, I found it hideously embarrassing. She seemed inappropriate, simultaneously chatty & over-familiar.

And yet, last weekend I:

• First told a total stranger that her son was a great big brother, after watching him help his little brother color a craft project; and

• Then commented to another stranger (a mom with her kid) that there were sinks in a portable restroom that was next to a much less useful porta-potty.

I didn’t know, when my mom was holding these embarrassing conversations, that she was doing it out of a sense of sisterhood. Now that I’ve joined that sisterhood, I suddenly understand her motivation. She wasn’t setting out to make me cringe, she was actively trying to make life easier for other women, particularly women with kids.

There are a lot of times that the mom-infighting gets me down–the working mom vs. SAHM, the helicopter parent vs. the neglectful mom. It’s nice, once in a while, to just help another mom have an easier day.

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