Moms Anonymous: From Hip Journalist to Totally Invisible
You Can’t Go Back
I’m at a reporter hangout waiting for a friend. It feels like years since I’ve been in a place like this. I’m so happy. If I weren’t here, I’d be home cooking or cleaning or sitting cross-legged on a floor stacking rainbow rings.
The bar is dark and candlelit. Around me sit slightly scruffy, intense journalist types. The woman at the table next to me speaks in a slow, confident way. She’s a reporter and is wildly name-dropping. There’s a famous politician she’s interviewing, an actor she knows, a fashion designer whose house she went round to for Sunday lunch. Her companion, another journalist, crouches below the table with a broom and dustpan, sweeping up names.
If only.
I used to know people in places like this. I used to talk like they did, with purpose and the feeling I played some part in the day’s events.
Now here I sit, an anonymous mom, self-conscious over whether I look suburban in my mom jeans and tangerine sweater.
My friend enters the bar, glowing from the cold and visibly buzzing from her day. It’s at that moment, I spot blood spot on my sweater.
My daughter had her first nose bleed just as I was walking out the door. She was using our sofa as a luge run.
