Roses Are Red, Pity is Unnecessary

I have a new friend, who is a single Choice mom who went a slightly different route. She is a mom who adopted, a beautiful little smart girl. She is much braver and stronger and financially practical than I am to have been able to do this, and I am in great awe of her. I don’t know her very well, as we met through a friend-of-a-friend kind of thing, and have only been on handful of playdates together, but she’s a good mom and her daughter is very well-behaved, and as long as... well, I couldn't come up with anything, I don’t have a whole lot of other standards. I know she's a bit Catholic, but I can get past that, and she wasn't wearing a Tea Party t-shirt, and she wasn't wearing socks with sandals, so, I think we're ok.

We are, of course, Facebook friends, since she has yet not made fun of me for feeding Jellybean fried bologna cut in the shape of a heart for Valentine’s Day, instead of a healthy nutritious bowl of hot oatmeal with dried cranberries in the shape of hearts or whatever the hell the hippies did this morning (for the record, I do actually make oatmeal a lot, we both like it, although we try to refrain from putting chili powder on it). She posts super-cute pics and videos of her precious daughter almost as often as I do, and I often check them out to see how JR measures up what they are up to.

Today she posted some early pics of E in the orphanage that were breaking my heart. She had told me stories, of the time that elapsed. Not just the time between when she knew E was going to be hers, but the time that passed between when she got there, and when she was allowed to take her home. How cruel, to watch E grow up long-distance via photographs, without a mom. How awful, to be there, to only be allowed to visit her, to have to leave her every night, to have to say good-byes constantly, to have to re-do pages and pages of paperwork because of one missed word (seriously, this happened to her). I look at her story as terribly, horribly sad.

But then I realized, she has this wonderful, sweet little girl. I bet you she doesn’t see her story as sad. I bet she doesn’t look at those pictures and feel unhappy. And I was like, whoa, does she look at ME and think MY story is sad? Because I tend to bum people out when I talk about the whole Quiet thing. So I guess it’s all perspective. For some reason I was thinking about it when I was driving home from drop-off this morning. It’s like those people you see in the airport, who are all dressed up in some crazy outfit, wearing stilettos and skin-tight clothing and they’re all made up and not a hair out of place. They can’t be comfortable. They have to be miserable. They can’t be happy people. There I am, in yoga pants, who knows when I showered last, or at least when I last washed my hair. But I think I’m a pretty happy person.

So I guess I’m saying this. On a day like today, when other people celebrate more traditionally with a partner, say what you will but Bossy Pants made me buy her fresh flowers, and I got up early to make her a special breakfast. Also, I had to bake cookies for her class party. She had a special outfit to wear, and there were special books to read, and NickJr ran never-ending commercials for the Dora ‘Grumpy Old Troll Gets Married’ special that I swear, Jelly was going to HAVE A HEART ATTACK AND DIE if I didn’t ‘Mama, you Tivo dat, ok? Ok, mama? You ask Tivo?!’ while she waved her hands in the air and hopped from one foot to the other, eyes glued to the screen just like NickJr had intended. Brilliant marketing bastards. So that’s what we’ll be watching on TV tonight. I’m sad that I’m not parenting with someone, and I’m sad that I don’t have a partner, but not in a woe-is-me, I’m-going-to-lay-here-and-cry-thinking-about-it-while-watching-this-stupid-movie-eating-chocolates-I-bought-for-myself kind of way. I don’t need a special day for self-pity, I can catch up on that whenever. Today for me is just another day, with a spunky almost-three-year old Valentine. Who told me this morning that I was ‘just a little bit bossy’. Oh, man, the teen years are going to be fun with this one.

Happy Valentine’s to the single ladies out there. And you married unhappy ones, you deserve a break today, too. The rest of you, I don’t want to hear about it.