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Practice Makes Perfect?

© Amy Condra-Peters

Last month, my husband and I took a vacation. Since this was our first non-relative-visiting vacation in seven years, we shared a light-hearted sense of adventure as we boarded the plane. We found our seats, accepted our complimentary glasses of wine, and proposed a toast. To London! To love! To us! Then we heard a soft whimpering that threatened to escalate into a full-fledged wail. Oh, right . . . to our baby! While my two older girls, Zoe and Emma, were having fun with their granddaddy, chowing down Happy Meals and swinging up to the clouds at the neighborhood park, our nine-month-old was hanging with the jet set.

Our flight was joyfully uneventful - meaning, of course, that we were not subjected to any major meltdowns from our little travel companion. All of the mothers of young babies were seated along the bulkhead so that we would have extra room (and could be more easily and completely avoided by our fellow passengers!). This gave me ample opportunity to swap vital baby statistics with other mommies - age, name, gender. I realized that these other women were first-time moms, and that they assumed that I was, too. To my surprise, I did not contradict their impressions.

This became my habit throughout our trip. Instead of wearing my status as a seasoned mom with pride (and perhaps well-earned arrogance?), I reveled in the pretense that all of this was new to me, that our life revolved around one daughter, not three, and that our family was newly launched into the world. Later, I started to tell this story to my friend, who quickly responded that she always feels smug when people think that her youngest son is her first. In fact, she makes a point of contradicting their assumptions: "Well, when my first son did this . . . "

I, on the other hand, made an effort not to let on to my mothering background. I was slightly appalled at my readiness to deny my firstborns - not only had I left them behind, here I was pretending that they didn¹t even exist! This pretense, however, afforded granted me a certain freedom - with this third baby of mine, I was strutting around with Ruby in her baby backpack, whipping up my sweater to feed her on demand, snuggling in with her and my husband at night. Ruby¹s every need was attended to in an empathetic, competent manner. Hey, I was the perfect mom! And this, I later realized, was the secret motivation for my social lie.

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