Cross-posted at my new address: spynotes.wordpress.com

Yesterday's playdate was sufficiently lubricated that I did not require additional beverages upon my return home. I find these gatherings of mothers a bit disorienting. I should state outright that all of them are very nice, but most of them, at least based on what little I know of them, have such different lives and views from myself -- I've been in a hothouse of academics or would-be academics for a very long time -- that I always end up feeling a bit like an anthropologist fraternizing with her objects of study. This is precisely the aspect of Little Children that Tom Perrota got exactly right. It's not so much the superiority in life/inferiority in parenting vis-a-vis my colleagues in child-rearing that the main character of Little Children feels. It's more like I find myself in a country that even after five years feels foreign. And I've lived overseas, so I know foreign.

There is the shy mother who blushes at the most benign hint of talk of sex. She wears turtleneck and ankle length denim skirts, even in the summer. She has holiday sweaters and a bumper sticker on her car that reads "As A Former Fetus, I'm Against Abortion." As the talk turns to sex toys and she turns beet red, I have to wonder how she has managed to bear eight children. Her best friend is a loud, brassy southerner who will tell anyone anything and calls everyone hon. Every move she makes has a purpose. She's warm and friendly in that peculiarly southern way that lets you know she's your friend but you are not hers unless she says so. The kind of friendliness that builds a wall and digs a moat. It's safer to ignore her than cross her. They bond in their religious beliefs, both evangelicals. Beyond that, it's hard to see what they have in common.

The hostess is running around pouring margaritas out of a pitcher and beer from the tap in their outdoor bar as she talks about hosting an upcoming bridal shower for her sorority sisters. She is one who never sits still. She was probably a cheerleader in high school. She has a good heart and will be president of the PTA one day because if she sees something that needs doing, she does it and gets others to help her. She throws a lot of parties, most potluck. Her pug dog plays at her feet while her kids run wild with the others on the lawn. Her daughter is the alpha girl in AJ's class. There is nothing from looking at her or listening to her that particularly distinguishes her from the other girls. They are all cute and friendly and ready to learn. But her daughter is the one everyone wants to be friends with. And I don't think it's just about the swingset with the rock climbing wall or the backyard moonwalk or the waterfall and koi pond.

There are two quiet mothers, thin with short blonde hair and pale freckles, who are talking sotto voce. I confused the two of them for a long time when I first moved here. "Everyone here is blonde," I complained to Mr. Spy. Mr. Spy felt vindicated for his general tendency to mix up women's first names, even those he's known a while. "They all look the same." Their children are all blonde too. Their husbands are the ones who meet at Hooters every Thursday for lunch. "We tell our wives we go for the chicken wings," one told Mr. Spy at AJ's Science Fair last spring. They are both thin too, one a marathoner, the other a biker with an insane wardrobe of Technicolor jerseys.

The ultra fashionable mom, mother of AJ's sometime friend Ben Franklin Boy, is dressed in pink and green and perfect shoes, a punkish parody of prep that I kind of admire but could never pull off. She talks about her eBay business and shopping expeditions. She's a southern California transplant. I find her fascinating, because she has this superficial persona, but her kids are both really smart and interesting and unusual. There must be more there than meets the eye.

There's the mom who talks like she's given up smoking only recently. She's one of the few without a kid in kindergarten. I overhear her saying, "That's why I could never work in an emergency room because I would NOT ever pull something out of someone's butt." The giggles grow as more drinks are poured.

This topic of conversation has trickled down from the sex toy talk that ultimately drove turtleneck mom from the party, protesting that it wasn't her embarrassment but her second youngest daughter's soccer game. Children's sports are a good excuse for just about anything. The mom who's the mom you wish you had, mother of AJ's friend M, mentioned that she used to work in an emergency room, "And half of our business was dealing with the results of peoples' weird sex habits."

"It's weird being here without the men," observes one of the blondes. "It's the way it should be," someone adds. "We should do this more often," says another. And then we all dissolve back into our smaller conversations.

I talk most to Yoga Mom, mother of The Girl Next Door. We have more in common, being liberal Democrats in a sea of those who swing the other way. We bond over our hatred of the new DJ on the only radio station that plays any bands that we like. The mom who put her daughter in the morning class when all the others are in the afternoon, the one who works as a hygienist for her brother the dentist, mentions that there's "an African-American" on her daughter's soccer team, and then, in the hushed tones generally reserved for discussing fatal diseases or embarrassing errors, "and both her mothers are lesbians." I bury a snicker in my margarita. Ex-smoker mom says, "Mayberry's getting more diverse." "It's about time!" Yoga Mom says loudly. It's always been diverse, I think. It's just that now it's becoming diverse in a way that we have to notice. I notice that the mom who just moved into the neighborhood, the white mom with the African-American twin kindergartners, is not there. Probably because she's new. Probably.

AJ is afraid of the dog, even though he's on a leash and is not at all interested in him. He lags behind, worried, not playing for a while. Eventually, though, the excitement of all the children and all the things to play with, he disappears. I have to drag him away from the moonwalk, which is collapsing under the weight of too many children laughing incredibly hard. "I had so much fun," said AJ in the car on the way home. I was a little surprised to find myself saying, "Me too, AJ," and meaning it.

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