My take on pregnancy and birth (home birth advocate) may have been the beginning to my feeling of alienation from the world of mommies. "Mommies" were always the other women I saw at the park, grocery store or at the zoo, I was just an imposter. Maybe it is because I don’t have all of the gear to make my mommy image complete or maybe it is because I seem to miss what other parents consider to be big issues. Both my children were four weeks old before they had a name, when it came time to choose schools for them, I went with the local, alternative school because it"felt right," and I have never bought a baby-gate. Parenting is purely instinctual for me and I try to never read parenting books. They mess with my mind, and I am perfectly capable of doing that myself without the aide of a book.

I also find chatting difficult and this is a must have skill in order to be a part of the mommy-world. Even when I succeed in my attempt to small talk, I think I confuse the other moms. The human brain wants to categorize people, it is how we understand one another and a big way mothers categorize one another is by the labels "working mom" and "stay-at-home mom." I am both. I work, but I bring my kids with me or work from home. This makes me a working, primary caregiver mommy, which is sort of paradoxical. In fact, a lot of my mothering could be perceived as paradoxical, therefore hard to categorize. When I see the confused or blank expressions come over the other moms as we talk, I imagine the wheels in their brain turning. "Is she an attachment parent? No, she isn’t breastfeeding and keeps talking about how much she loves her breaks from her kids. Is she the serious, intellectual, type of mom? No, look at her trying to ride that kiddie motorcycle. Plus, she doesn’t even know what developmental phase her son is in. Is she the yuppie, overachiever-type? I seriously doubt it. She hasn’t signed her kids up for any enrichment classes and doesn’t seem too concerned about what school they attend. Stay-at-home mommy? No, she seems too happy."

I recently read a hypothesis in Brain, Child magazine that claimed what unites us universally as mothers is our shared worry and concern over our children. That seemed plausible to me, until I thought about what I hear most moms worrying about – school and safety. My husband worries night and day about safety, so I figure we have that covered in our household and don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. I would have to say in the last month I have probably spent just as much time wondering who decided that all parents have to carry a soiled diaper around with them all day instead of throwing them away in a public facility as I have pondering the safety of my children. I know it isn’t a deep or complicated issue, but I really wonder why we have all bought into this diaper removal scheme as parents and why I continue to forget these bundles of joy in my backpack and/or car until it is much, much too late.

All mothers have concerns, but do we have the same concerns? I have learned that my concerns differ from most other moms I meet, so I started categorizing them into "acceptable concerns to talk about while building sand castles at the park" and "you’ll freak the other mom out, but go ahead and voice this one if you have to." Over the summer I had a fleeting moment where I actually felt like I fit in. I was able to chat about potty training woes (acceptable concern) and laugh at several "ha-ha aren’t kids funny when they destroy your house" episodes. But then I started in on a monologue about when my neighbor found my keys dangling in the door of my car, where they had been all night long, and I felt the camaraderie fade.

"I was so sure with the sleepless nights, nursing, and pregnancy behind me, that I was really on top of things. I was becoming reacquainted with that long lost friend, short-term memory, but in actuality I’m just as out of it as I was when I had my own private pharmacy of hormones coursing through my veins."

"But your house could have been robbed! A stranger could have been in your house while you were sleeping," one of the moms interrupted.

"Sure, but more importantly I’m telling you, I still don’t have my brain back! Five years into this mommy-gig and I don’t remember where I left my keys or if I’ve fed the cat in days!" I cried.

"Yeah, but a house being robbed or your car being stolen, I mean that’s a big deal. By the way, where are your kids?"

"Over there on the playground."

"But you can hardly see them from here."

"Yeah, but I can hear them."
She shook her head in disbelief and walked away from me.

I may have learned how to categorize my concerns, but I still am a long way off from remembering to keep the one category to myself.

Corbin Lewars lives in Seattle, WA with her two children and husband, where she continues to find herself alone with her concerns. She is the author of the memoir, Not What I Expected and Swing Set, a sexy mommy-lit book. Her essays can be found in Midwifery Today, mamaphonic.com, Stories with Grace, and other literary publications. She is the founder of the zine Reality Mom and can be reached at reality_mom@yahoo.com.