I forgot my Orthopedic Shoes

Early this morning, I looked at my calendar to see what the day would bring. I was pleased to see that our church scheduled a "Mother's Club" event at 12:30 pm, so I called the church secretary just to make sure I could bring along my daughter. "Yes, of course!" she said brightly. So I packed Madeline up when she awoke from her morning nap and off we went, eager to meet some other young mothers.

When we arrived, the parking lot was completely full. I was expecting to meet maybe five or six moms at the most with their little ones, so I put on some lip gloss and charged forward. When Madeline and I turned to enter the room, I stopped in my tracks. Through the glass doors I could see at least 40 or 50 women....all with white hair wearing flowered purple and yellow skirt suits with their orthopedic shoes and handbags. It was a Mother's Club alright...that got its start about 50 years ago when these women had babies on their hip. It should really be named Great Grandmother's Club, but no one wants to offend all the lovely senior ladies who drive their Cadillacs to the church the fourth Wednesday of the month. 

Madeline and I still had a great afternoon. We spent several hours with the church staff and ended up planning the "Young Mothers Group," a relaxed playgroup that I'm going to help organize. Turns out I'm only the latest casualty of those misleading words -- "Mother's Club" -- in the Sunday bulletin. 

But still.....  This touched on something that has been on my mind a lot lately, which is that I cannot seem to find activities that don't directly conflict with Madeline's naps. Junior League, my grown-up sorority, is fun and important time for me to spend on myself, but all the meetings are in the evenings -- time that I consider precious family time with Rob -- and certainly not kid-friendly. I also paid my $20 and belong to the MOMS Club of Peoria; So, Madeline and I could go meet Laini in our PJs for donuts on Tuesday or Marin for Birthday Club on Wednesday, if only everything didn't begin 20 minutes into Madeline's morning nap. I'm sure Laini and Marin are very nice people, but I won't have the opportunity to find out until Madeline goes down to one nap. And I'm not really sure I want to go anywhere in my PJs. I'm more of a high heels kind of girl.

As a social person by nature, I need and crave these outings, even if it means chatting up the college kid making my latte at Starbucks. Which I do. So I just keep plugging away, seeking out events and packing Madeline up into the car when she happens to be awake, hoping to meet cool people in my stage of life. I know it will happen. It may just take a little time and some accidental senior citizen lunches.