Peggy, who has been cutting my hair for three years, used to drive me crazy. She can turn a $15 trim of the bangs into an hour`s dissertation on clothes to buy, the new fashion season`s colors, videos to rent, the causes of split ends and the best pizza in town.
But lately I find what she has to say refreshing. At least she isn`t talking about children. And she isn`t asking me about mine.
It took me a few years of boring everyone I knew with baby stories of our brilliant older son and now our charming younger son to realize that while my life and my husband`s may be completely hollow except for them, other people`s lives are not. They do not crave the infinitesimal details of teething and tantrums. It takes great humility for a mother to realize that for the majority of the breathing population, baby talk is the pits.
My friend Catherine unwittingly helped me come to this conclusion. She is a first-time mother and, my other friends and family will testify, is how I was two years ago: disproportionately aware of her son`s every moment. Catherine can turn an innocent play group discussion into a one-hour recital of year-old Andrew`s eating habits and/or a lively debate on one-piece snowsuits versus separate leggings.
I know I was like this. I even entered Weldon, our older son, in photo contests. But now that I am three years and two children into this motherhood thing I don`t make those social errors. While our sons make me laugh heartily at their innocence and bravado, I know for the most part that the newsworthiness of their every discovery is lost in the translation. What stops me sometimes before retelling detailed accounts of our children`s days is realizing that I sound just like my grandmother.
My grandma, gifted with a wonderfully warm and generous heart, was keen on detail. Big Time. Grandma took the first 15 minutes of every evening meal she shared with us describing in painful replication the luncheon she`d had that afternoon.
”Over here on the salad plate was a lettuce leaf, with a ball of cottage cheese and a pineapple slice,” Grandma would say gesturing so her hands would form a cup. ”And then for the main course was chicken salad, with celery and walnuts, and a slice of cantaloupe, oh yes, and some grapes.”
I`ve worked with women who would spend three hours of a workday swapping wallet photos and toilet-training stories. These experiences and others have made me draft my own personal credo: Don`t talk about your children until asked. And if there is an irresistible story bursting from within you, preface it with a warning, and please, please make it brief.
At current count, I have 37 nieces and nephews-17 on my side, 20 on my husband Walter`s. That number shifts often. So between our families there are thousands of stories to be told, most of which I`ve heard and that have genuinely made me laugh out loud and retell half a dozen times each. The importance of each child`s anecdotal rites of passage should not be diminished in the face of such numbers. But they all can be put in perspective.
Because of that, baby talk is not integral to my social repertoire anymore. I don`t have that unquenchable desire to tell bathtime stories at every dinner party, football game or housewarming.
Even Walter didn`t laugh when I repeated Weldon`s greatest compliment of me to date: ”Oh, Mommy, you look like Mary Poppins.”
But my husband does like to step into the boys` rooms with me for a few moments in the silence of the late evening and watch them sleep. Weldon is sprawled across the bed sideways, a dozen books littered around him. Brendan is calm and soft under a light pastel blanket, his mouth closed safely around a blue pacifier.
And I know when we look at our sons that Walter and I are thinking that we can`t wait for tomorrow-because then there will be even more wonderful stories that very few people will care to hear.
