The Very Big Village

Our last guest post is from Robbin, and I love this post because it says nice things about me! Just kidding, I'm not that narcissistic. I enjoyed a lovely dinner with Robbin last year, and I love her blog. I'll be back tomorrow, I promise.

Wow – my first guest post.

I am just as nervous as I was when I gave my first talk at a scientific conference. Only I am less worried about what I am going to wear.

Okay, I take that back. I am more nervous. When I give talks at scientific meetings, I have a role to play and a conversational "script" even if it is only in my head. I know what I am talking about. It's my research, and nobody knows it better than I do. It "flows". It's logical.

I blog because I am socially inept. I blog because I am excruciatingly shy. I blog because the degree of anonymity inherent in blogging allows me to stop thinking about how I LOOK to other people and more about what is coming out of my mouth (or fingers). It's funny, I had a woman friend of mine, a Muslim, explain about the wearing of her haircloth and modest clothing. She says she actually found it liberating because she felt it de-emphasized the way she looked and let her "real" self show through.

I got it. I understood.

So when Jodi found out I came to her area regularly on business and suggested we get together for dinner, my first response was "Great!", immediately followed by "Oh, shit."

I was excited because I cherish the online friendships and it's fun to finally put a face with the "voice". And, let's face it, business travel is monotonous and dinner company which isn't expecting me to discuss, well, business, is a rare and welcome change. But despite what I do, I don't invest a lot of money in slick businessware. Chinos or wool pants, business shirts, sweaters and corduroy blazers are the extent of my travel wardrobe. I wear jeans to work. Meeting with sophisticated big-city professional-career-type moms lead to the usual agonizing over clothing-makeup-shoe combinations, trying not to look like an unwashed philistine in the presence of a sleekly coiffed, manicured, coutured lawyer-mom.

I was right about the cute-sleek- well-dressed part. The wonderful surprise was that Jodi was also warm and funny, with a "get-real" attitude toward motherhood that was an enormous relief to a person like myself, who navigates a minefield of overachieving motherhood among those in my professional life. Combined with the fact that she picked out a pretty darn good Indian restaurant (my all-time favorite food), it was a great evening.

Business schedules haven't allowed me a reprisal, but I have enjoyed the text/email/bloggy friendship we have had – trading mom and professional advice on everything from weird viral manifestations to potty training to Thomas the Tank Engine and the finer points of maintaining sanity during children's entertainment [The general concurrence is that ALL theaters should sell adult beverages at the concession area. Particularly before all children's features. God Bless New Orleans.]

And I was grateful to be given the opportunity to remember that we are all people behind the words and the WordPress/Blogspot themes. That our lives go on beyond what we share. That there is a very big village out there that help me me raise my son and hold my hand – figuratively if not literally – through the times I don't know what the hell I am doing. Best of all, they reassure me that nobody really knows what the hell they are doing in this big experiment called parenthood, but it's all okay because, really? We end up in the same place.

And that I still don't have to worry so much about my clothes.

That has been the very best part of being a blogger.