Mothers at the table
I went to a dinner in S. Hadley on Monday. It was a nice, relaxing evening for the most part, (people who were there will know what ‘for the most part’ refers to, but that’s not what this blog entry is about) spent with friends of all ages and vocations.
I forget how the topic turned to this, but at one point the hostess of the evening, a retired professor, observed that not one of the women at the table was a mother.
It seemed a strange thing to note, yet when I scanned the room I could see that she was right. I later noted to myself that there was only one person with children at the table, and that was a father. The rest were eight childless women of different ages (all over 30).
I am not sure what force brought us all together, or what the significance of this was, but it was a strange moment for me. The significance lies not in that we were all yet too young to consider having children, because that clearly was not the case. Many of the women at the table had most likely made a personal choice not to (although I confess to not knowing each and every woman at the table enough to have shared such intimacies).
I want to think a lot more about the significance of this table of no mothers, and maybe it’s not even significant at all. But it is what it is and it struck me as something worth thinking about.
daily life | sighclub December 7, 2005
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By pat, December 9, 2005 @ 9:09 am
I agree with all of this and am still pondering, but remember, the speaker herself was the only mother at the table (noted merely because I don’t want her daughter to become a forgotten entity).
By k, December 9, 2005 @ 9:55 am
ah – somehow I missed that. See? I don’t know enough about these women.