Growing up, I was always embarrassed by my mother’s ability to chat up strangers everywhere. But I seem possibly to have become That Woman. Not a lot, but in service to a greater good: information for Nutmeg about baby gear.
An adorable baby and his mother came into the coffee shop where I was working yesterday afternoon, and right away I noticed the brand name of the stroller. It looked nice. I found myself smiling at the baby, because he was so adorable, and I said something about his adorable-ness to his mother as she pulled him out of the stroller and sat down at the table next to me. We got chatting a bit about babies — I told her I was expecting my first grandchild, and she told me that this baby was his grandmother’s THIRTEENTH — and I figured I had to extend the conversation just a tad longer, to find out whether she liked her stroller.
Of course she did. People always like whatever equipment they’re carting around when you ask them about it. (I found the same thing happened when I stopped a guy in the supermarket parking lot to ask if he liked his Toyota Rav 4, the car we were thinking of buying.) I dutifully passed along that info to Nutmeg, and then listened for a while longer as this young mother chatted about returning to her job as a school therapist, hating the job and hating missing James, finding another work arrangement, and on and on. It reminded me how boring and lonely it can be to be a new mother; you glom on to anyone who seems interesed in what you have to say. And then of course, if you’re a certain kind of mother, you find that all you have to talk about is the mothering itself.
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