a real­ly won­der­ful book

Remem­ber I men­tioned “A Most Uncom­mon Degree of Pop­u­lar­i­ty” to you? Well, halfway through it, it was just a charm­ing book. Very fun­ny about a group of women who get real­ly, real­ly invest­ed in their daugh­ters’ lives, wor­ry­ing over their social sta­tus, their clothes, their his­to­ry essays, their car­pools. It all rang true to me, espe­cial­ly the part where the main char­ac­ter, Lydia, explains that “When we moms are talk­ing about the Spring Fair or cot­ton-fleece draw­string shorts, we’re talk­ing shop. In some ways it isn’t any dif­fer­ent from when the men talk about how their firms are billing. We are talk­ing about our jobs, too…” That is so true! From the out­side look­ing in, it would seem that hav­ing cof­fee with oth­er moth­ers is just social life, and in a way of course it is. But it’s also part of our jobs: to build rela­tion­ships with the moth­ers of our chil­dren’s friends, so you’re speak­ing the same lan­guage when it comes to dis­ci­pline, home­work, what is accept­able for your chil­dren to say to you, what sorts of presents you bring to birth­day par­ties. It’s all part of build­ing a lit­tle world with­in which your child can func­tion in lots of dif­fer­ent set­tings because the pro­fes­sion­als in charge (the moms) have made it all con­sis­tent, and safe, and life-enhanc­ing. In this world, what is one per­son­’s gos­sip is anoth­er per­son­’s (a moth­er’s) essen­tial due diligence.

That was all a lot of fun to read about. The author, Kath­leen Gilles Sei­del, has a fun­ny caus­tic wit, and the char­ac­ter has a great deal of strength, tenac­i­ty and hon­esty, but also some­where between the author and the char­ac­ter I sus­pect a lot of over­lap has tak­en place, and that adds to the authen­tic­i­ty of the story.

But then at the end it became all about my life! It has been so won­der­ful see­ing Avery so hap­py at school that I haven’t spent much time think­ing about what we left behind. And every­one has been so ready to wel­come me as anoth­er moth­er at school that I have cer­tain­ly not felt left out, not at all. But when Lydia real­izes that the school she has cho­sen for her chil­dren and been part of for so many years, since they were real­ly tiny, is no longer best for them and she needs to move them to anoth­er school, it all felt just like hav­ing to leave P.S. 234 in New York for our school here.

“Liv­ing in a small town teach­es you a lot, but one thing it does­n’t teach you is how to say good­bye. Fam­i­lies don’t move away as much as they do in D.C., and even when you do, you don’t say good­bye because your par­ents are still there and you will be com­ing back… This time I was going to say good­bye, bid farewell to the first place I had felt so com­plete­ly a part of, so com­plete­ly at home.

What pre­cious, pre­cious mem­o­ries I had — the Hal­loween parades with the mass­es of lit­tle witch­es, Indi­ans and princess­es; Erin and her friends wear­ing their Brown­ie uni­forms for the first time, both Erin and Thomas being so excit­ed about read­ing their first ‘chap­ter’ book; and that fun­ny, won­der­ful moment when Erin was in first grade and one of her friends saw me and chirped, “Hi, Mrs. Erin’s Mom.”…

I was­n’t just say­ing good­bye to the school; I was say­ing good­bye to my chil­dren being young.”

It’s hard to leave behind a place where your child was born, and then was the talk­a­tive baby that all the door­men and gro­cery store check­out girls learned to know by name, and then was the best cus­tomer at the ridicu­lous­ly expen­sive chil­dren’s cloth­ing shop (when they gave Avery a doll with “Hap­py 5th Birth­day, Avery” embroi­dered on it, John said sus­pi­cious­ly, “How much are you spend­ing there?”). She was lit­tle there. There’s no deny­ing that by the time we arrived in Lon­don, she was a bit of a young lady, and all the more so since we’ve been here. I guess part of what touched me about this book was how impor­tant it is to notice when you’re leav­ing one part of your child’s life behind, how good it has been, and then to notice again when the new life is heart­warm­ing and love­ly as well. We’ve been very lucky. Thank you Becky, for loan­ing me the book! Among oth­er things.

Yes­ter­day at school pick­up when I intro­duced Avery to a moth­er friend of mine, she shook hands and curt­syed! Eeek, what hap­pened to my rough and tum­ble child who once clocked a class­mate over the head with a broom han­dle? Of course, the oth­er child start­ed it.

John is off to New York, or rather to Red Gate Farm, for a week, where we have a sink­ing feel­ing we packed up ALL the bed­li­nens, tow­els, and oth­er tiny details that make life pos­si­ble, in box­es in the base­ment in case our real­tor found a renter (which she did­n’t: her emailed assur­ance that she would “sus­pend all show­ings” while John was there fell on slight­ly deaf ear: I could­n’t imag­ine that she was lead­ing swarms of peo­ple through the place when he was­n’t there). He has­n’t been away since the first week in Sep­tem­ber, so Avery and I are a bit flus­tered con­tem­plat­ing life as just the two of us. I sus­pect that Emmy will spend more time parked on Green Street, as I am still not whol­ly com­fort­able dri­ving here. John promis­es to report all news from Con­necti­cut, where the fall foliage is no doubt a bit more spec­tac­u­lar than it is here. But this morn­ing when I opened my win­dow shade, there was a show­er of gold­en leaves flut­ter­ing to the ground in the gar­den: a rather mut­ed, but still love­ly, sign of autumn.