My real work-buddy

Before I was a mom, I didn’t realize that in becoming a mom, you don’t don a cape with the letter “M” emblazoned on it, only to somehow take off at times to wear your other roles. There’s no Clark Kent/Superman, there’s only... ok I’m not going to say Supermom, but this other person. Of course the other roles, the other costume changes, are all still there; my point is there’s no taking off the cape. You own your mom-ness. You own it, obviously every moment you spend in the company of your child(ren), but you also own it at any job you may have, any errand you run, and certainly in all social settings. Parents out there know how much they talk about their kids when their supposed to be having adult time, and the non-parents know how difficult it is to get their parent friends to not talk about their kids when their supposed to be having adult time.

So it’s impossible to turn it all off. The conversations I have with my husband at trendy restaurants, while loving sitters mind our baby monitor, are about our daughter. Not all, but most. Okay, so before I was a mom, I had heard about this phenomenon but swore against it. Of course I would be one of “those” people. Turns out, kids give you a lot to talk about; so much so that it takes dinners (and a few glasses of wine) out of their reach and cry to actually process all that they go through (and in turn, put you through). It’s amazing when your partner all of sudden becomes your work-buddy; you then realize all those office happy hours out, when you swear with your colleagues that you’re not going to talk about work, but then you inevitably do, well, this parenting this isn’t completely different from that. You two have a job to do, the biggest and most important, nonetheless, but a job.

Which is why it is so great to have a good work buddy for a life-partner. M, thanks for sharing a baby and a cubicle with me. I’d totally write your TPS reports any day.