Sitting quietly in the ballet school. My beautiful perfect ballerina is preparing for a Christmas performance. The other mothers avoid my expressionless face. Their loud conversations fill the spaces in the common area, and in the hallways. They discuss trivial details of birthday parties, household activities, family gatherings. They tell their stories loudly and with great expression. They seem happy but I think some of them are not.
The ballerinas talk to me. The ask me questions about my knitting projects. They tell me stories about Ruby who calls them all her friends. They are social in a gentle curious way, not yet entirely broken into bragging and forces smiles. They giggle with each other. They hold hands. They talk about music and school and quizzes. Some of them study. My heart breaks knowing how quickly this time will pass for them. How soon they will become guarded in their stories. How careful they might become lest they be judged.
I feel fake. Like I don't belong here with the other mothers. I feel too young and also too old. My loneliness in a group is not uncommon, I tell myself again and again. And yet it must be palpable, are they avoiding me, or am I avoiding them?
5 comments:
Oh what a TREAT to see a new post from you. I feel your in-between-ness. If only we could be in the same waiting room, together, instead of feeling the same way about our similarities in such different locales. I could write so much more here. I am nodding with my whole self.
That last paragraph... yes... I feel that too. At the playground, the doctors office... ugh...
I, too, have been there. It's so very lonely when you don't know where you fit in, so you talk with the kids instead. (At least your not talking to yourself. That's what I've done in the past.)
I know how hard that was to write. I'm in the same, exact spot at the same, exact venue. Too bad our kids don't go to the same dance studio.
I, too, feel this way all the time. Glad to know I'm not alone. Somehow, maybe that will make it easier, if (when?) I do decide to take the first step and start up a conversation.
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