Motherhood is a Journey

Today the girls and I visited the Children's Museum. We do that a lot during the winter months and it's always fun for the kids and a nice little break for me. As we were wrapping up from lunch I watched all of the others mothers and few fathers doing the same. Suddenly it hit me; how white we all were, how ordinary in our Keens and Patagonia jackets. I looked around as other parents pulled the same organic blueberries from their satchels and Nalgene bottles filled with ice, never juice. A mother close by cooed to her baby the same way I coo to Gwen, asking her to say elephant, slow like that, "el-e-phant." I don't know what I'm saying exactly, except that there I was, just another organic produce toting, middle of the afternoon museum cooing, white mother.

I like my peers, truly I do. I love to affiliate with other women in my situation. We buy fair trade coffee at the kid friendly joint and we talk about Montessori education and simplicity parenting. We laugh about toilet training. These women are educated, funny, and kind. I enjoy these friendships immensely. This is who I am, in many ways, and yet I find myself craving some diversity; friendships with a little grit, the opportunity to meet and know mothers who are different from myself.

It seems like such an immeasurable privelege to be a white, stay at home mother living in Portland. It almost seems indulgent. Wouldn't it be a profound gift to have the opportunity to meet mothers of every age and race, culture and religion and compile their stories, form friendships and solidarity and to dig out the common threads? Yes, indeed.