I sat around my living room this afternoon with a bunch of eight babies and their mothers (plus one in the womb). As I regarded us mothering so naturally amidst the mayhem-- wiping noses and bums, cleaning up spills, managing meltdowns, feeding and soothing infants-- I had a hard time picturing myself and these same women as the girls who used to dance drunkenly on top of bars.
When I consider the particular season of life I shared with these women-- the shenanigans we willingly put ourselves through, the spontaneity our days and nights were full of, and the plethora of poor decisions we repeatedly made-- the reality that we are all doting mothers remains a real mind fuck.
It's not that I never pictured us being mothers at some point because I'm sure I could for some of us. A few had serious boyfriends and conversations of the future tended to happen after a few too many glasses of the cheapest wine we could afford. However, because I wasn't one of those friends who mentioned kids during our drunken conversations, I certainly never pictured sitting on creaky hardwood floors, arms full of baby and toddler, (still) drinking cheap white wine, and deciding that I like this version of me and my friends a whole lot more than the girls we once were.
A lot of the time, I still feel like that twenty-one year old girl who has absolutely nothing figured out, the girl who tries and fails to keep her head above the water, only hoping by the grace of God that someone is there to throw her a line. In college, those girls I danced on bars with were that line to shore.
Today, as I sat on my floor surrounded by those same girls who are now, a decade later, wives and mothers and, yet, just as much fun, I realized that they are still that same lifeline.
The only difference is now, we're the ones getting thrown up on.