I was sitting in a Chick-fil-a play area awhile back, when I took a second to look around at the other moms crammed next to me on the small vinyl bench.
One mom was shouting for her kid to, “Play nice,” turning and offering an explanation as to why her son was being a little aggressive that afternoon.
Another mom was trying to keep her one year old from climbing up into the tubing while she simultaneously nursed her newborn.
Another mom was attempting to convince her little girl to put her shoes back on before they left the restaurant.
And I was loving every second.
The Chick-fil-a play area is the land of my people.
There’s no judgement. There’s no division of social class. There’s just this sisterhood of moms who all said, “Let’s go to Chick-fil-a today.”
Do you know what is so evident in that crowded little room? Do you know what you can see if you take a second to look around the rest of the restaurant, or the park, or the doctor’s office waiting room?
Motherhood has a way of leveling the playing field.
Here’s what I mean. Your baby doesn’t care if you were the high school prom queen, band queen, or anything in between. Your baby doesn’t care if you dated Ryan Star or got invited to party with the senior class when you were just a sophomore.
Your toddler could care less if you got straight A’s, B’s, or completed your GED.
Your baby doesn’t care if you wore Abercrombie and Fitch from head to toe or shopped at thrift shops because you were your own sort of fashionable.
Babies puke on the girl everyone wanted to be in high school just like they puke on the girl everyone seemed to overlook.
Motherhood does not care where you came from, who you were in high school, or what you were known for in college.
No matter who you used to be, your kid is still going to keep you up at night, make you wonder if you’re doing it right, and need their booty wiped.
Motherhood has this incredible power to help us see each other as… equals.
The truth is, we always have been. We’ve always been more alike than we stopped to realize. It shouldn’t ever have been about who was better. We shouldn’t have ever used each other as measuring sticks.
But somehow, when we decide to look, motherhood helps us finally see that. It helps us finally see each other as women, just doing our very best, all wondering if it will be enough.
We work so hard to secure who we are when we’re younger. We put in so much effort to be seen, or known, or loved a certain way. And yet when they put that baby into our arms, or that adopted child into our lap, or that step child into our heart, we realize that we are just getting to know this new version of the woman who lives in our skin. We realize that we are so much more than we saw before.
And somehow, we are able to finally see that in each other too.
She’s just like you, ya know. We’re all on the same team now, feeding our kids nuggets and hoping for five minutes where they can climb and get their energy out before we go home. (Don’t come after me if you don’t feed your kid Chick-fil-a, it’s an analogy, people.) 😉
The bottom line is motherhood treats us all the same… so maybe we finally should treat each other the same too. Who knew baby puke was so powerful.
SO much love,
Becky
