Apparently I have been hired, without actually applying for the job, for the position of AJ�s social secretary. It is quite a demanding job, for unlike his parents, AJ is not a hermit. While his school year was spent primarily shuttling back and forth to preschool and off to occasional outings with mom and/or dad, he now has a hefty schedule of his own to which I am begrudgingly invited since I am the one with the keys to the car.

After an aborted attempt at water aerobics this morning (It was a little chilly and my ladies didn�t show) AJ and I drove to a local park to meet his friend D to ride bikes and play on a playground. AJ quickly abandoned his bike after he couldn�t keep up with his friend and opted for running laps. The two of them played quite nicely until their third friend Z. arrived, at which point the bickering began and continued on and off through the rest of the morning and also through lunch, by which point I dragged AJ screaming into the car and drove home with a headache.

AJ and I haven�t done the playgroup thing very seriously, but this particular trio plus moms and assorted younger siblings, has been assembling a couple of times a week outside of school for the past few weeks and it�s been highly educational. For one thing, I�ve learned that I spend much less time thinking about my kids than these moms. When AJ goes to bed, I head to my office and think about music. Or I talk politics with my husband. Or veg out in front of The Simpsons. When these women have some time alone, they make scrapbooks about their children.

The whole scrapbooking phenomenon puzzles me. It seems to be a very suburban affair. I�m not opposed to the creation of scrapbooks. I�ve made some myself in past lives when I had more time on my hands. And I�m rather fond of my photo albums. But scrapbooking as craft industry is something entirely different. The phenomenon appears to come out of the need for stay-at-home moms to have some personal creative outlet and the simultaneous guilt about that need, hence a personal craft project that requires time away from family (because most of the scrapbookers seem to meet in groups to pursue their craft) but is also about the memorialization of the family.

All this is by way of saying that I keep getting invited to these scrapbooking events and fumbling about with my response. I�m pleased to be invited, but I really don�t have much of an interest in the supposed purpose of the event. It�s an etiquette quandary. Also a grammatical one, because I will freely admit that I am immediately biased against the activity of scrapbooking because the word �scrapbooking� annoys me so much.

After a morning spent with other moms, I wonder about my dedication to my role as mother. As our boys are sizing each other up (�I�m faster than you are!� �My feet are bigger than yours!� �My bike is cooler than yours� � all actual quotes from this morning�s gathering), the mothers are sizing each other up too. I like this group of mothers. It�s small. And while we come from different backgrounds and have different goals, we have similar views about the way children should behave and about the ways we help them to behave that way. We don�t like our kids to watch too much TV. We think being outside is important. And we think letting the kids work out some of their own problems is important too (or some examples of things we do NOT do, see the entry bythe lass that inspired her to say, �Jesus Christ on a cracker.�). But I wonder if I can really measure up. Am I too strict with AJ or too lax? Does he have enough toys or too many? Do I spend too much time thinking about other things?

0 people said it like they meant it