Fitting In

This summer I have spent Monday mornings hanging out with this little lady:


Harper Lain Schoon Tanis…soon to become one of the World’s Greatest Women.

Last week I was heading to the park to meet my friend Elizabeth for a “play date.” In the six short blocks to the park I managed to have a bit of an identity crisis. It started as I pushed the stroller across the street in front a cute guy in a car and realized, “he thinks I’m a mom.” Which then turned into, “I’m meeting a friend my age (who really is a mom) for a play date. This could be my life….a mom.” As I neared the park and saw a Mom Pack (similar to a Wolf Pack, but slightly less vicious) standing watch over their children playing I developed sudden anxiety because I hadn’t yet put sunscreen on Harper. I imagined the Mom Pack watching me and thinking, “what kind of mother is she?!?” Wait. I’m not a mother. I’m a baby-sitter. A 31-year-old baby-sitter. It wasn’t quite noon but I was definitely ready for a drink.

I’ve been re-reading some of my favorite books lately and just finished Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I first read it when I went to Africa. As I read it again I became even more convinced that we could (should) be great friends. She eloquently explains part of the reasoning for the quick onset of my identity crisis (which, to be quite frank, happens more often than I’d like to admit as a single woman in her thirties in this lovely Midwestern town).

“To create a family with a spouse is one of the most fundamental ways a person can find continuity and meaning in America (or any) society. I rediscover this truth every time I go to a big reunion of my mother’s family in Minnesota and I see how everyone is held so reassuringly in their positions over the years. First you are a child, then you are a teenager, then you are a young married person, then you are a parent, then you are retired, then you are a grandparent—at every stage you know who you are, you know that your duty is and you know where to sit at the reunion. Until at last you are sitting with the ninety-year-olds in the shade, watching over your progeny with satisfaction. Who are you? No problem—you’re the person who created all this. The satisfaction of this knowledge is immediate, and moreover, it’s universally recognized. How many people have I heard claim their children as their greatest accomplishment and comfort of their lives? It’s the thing they can always lean on during a metaphysical crisis, or a moment of doubt about their relevancy—If I have done nothing else in this life, then at least I have raised my children well.

But what if, either by chose or by reluctant necessity, you end up not participating in this comforting cycle of family and continuity? What if you step out? Where do you sit at the reunion? How do you mark time’s passage without the fear that you’ve just frittered away your time on earth without being relevant? You’ll need to find another purpose, another measure by which to judge whether or not you have been a successful human being. I love children, but what if I don’t have any? What kind of person does that make me?” (Eat, Pray, Love, 95).

Before you get too concerned: I am not really having a crisis over whether I want to have children right now or not (I don't); nor am I about to take any drastic measures to fit more comfortably in this culture as a 31-year-old woman. But I have been giving a lot of thought lately to where I “fit” here as most of my contemporaries are in the Mom Pack or at least not having to give thought to whether they should or should not take a date with them to a wedding. Granted, I have been trying to find where I "fit" ever since I moved back from the Dominican Republic 4 years ago…and though there have been moments where I’ve thought that I had found my niche, life keeps on keeping on and I am forced to find new niche.

Thankfully, I have good people in my life to encourage me and remind me that I am indeed a normal person and that I am not (despite my mind’s best attempts to convince myself at times) going to end up a crazy woman with lots of cats and almost-completed-cross-word-puzzles lying around my apartment.

Though...at least then people (myself included) would know then where I fit: in the Crazy Aunt category. Again, as my should-be-friend puts it:

"Last summer, my five-year-old niece had a little friend over to my sister’s house to play. I asked the child when her birthday was. She told me it was January 25.

"Uh-oh!" I said. “You’re an Aquarius! I’ve dated enough Aquarians to know that they are trouble.”

Both the five-year-olds looked at me with bewilderment and a bit of fearful uncertainty. I had a sudden horrifying image of the woman I might become if I’m not careful: Crazy Aunt Liz. The divorceé in the muumuu with dyed orange hair who doesn’t eat dairy but smokes menthols, who’s always just coming back form her astrology cruise or breaking up with her aroma-therapist boyfriend, who reads the Tarot cards of kindergarteners and says things like, “Bring Aunty Liz another wine cooler, baby, and I’ll let you wear my mood ring…” (Eat, Pray, Love,96).

Ahhh...that's funny to me. And, I have always wanted a mood ring...