Achieving the Stereotype

One Saturday last October, I leaned against a chain linked fence next to a homemade "Barcelona Matadors" banner for Henry's soccer team, watching the game, surrounded by parents not talking to each other but yelling at their kids. Svea was playing at my feet and I had a paper cup of Starbucks black coffee in my hand. I had on jeans.

And I had a revelation: I am a stereotype. Fully.

I was disturbed.

I felt trapped by my situation, how I presented myself, and how strange it was to realize that I had chosen and created this web that looked like everyone else's.

I finished my coffee, they finished the game. We went home to rest in the false safety of our neighborhood and talked about what to do with the rest of our day since it was now 9:30 a.m.

We were so overzealously average in this average autumn weekend.

This past week the kids started school. Both of them in Big School. My trauma of separation usually runs on a delayed schedule, so I felt great this week and will welcome the tears in about 3 weeks. We met teachers, doled out supplies, made lunches, signed forms and wrote checks, shook out new clothes, slept in our new shoes, even rode the bus - just like everyone else.

Awesomely average.

I sit here, with 2.58 kids, excited and overwhelmed that this October we will welcome our third child. I look at our Golden Retriever who will not bring me a tennis ball. I look at the art on our walls and hear Ben Harper through the speakers. There is something to this, this racing toward the average, this occupation of the fat part of the bell curve.

I have chosen this; I like this. Even if the awareness of it is uncomfortable.

Maybe the discomfort is to remind me of the uniqueness in Henry's handwriting and ninja drawings and in Svea's reconstruction of neighborhoods using Polly Pocket AND Littlest Pet Shop. Maybe we'll just be average for a few more years and then shake it up a bit, really stick it to the Man. Maybe not. I have no answers...just like everyone else.

For now, for today, we'll continue even if it is just like our neighbors, who happen to be pretty nice.