Making Room at the Table

I wish adulting came with a detailed diagram.

Instructions on how to fill out tax forms (I always have to call my dad), remove my hair from the tub drain (my husband can never die, ever, or I’ll have to move every time my bathtub starts to fill with water), plus all of the planning, like retirement, and savings, and vacations, and a house, plus baby-raising, and just all the flinging flanging things.

Why can’t Janice Ian come along with a banging, illustrated diagram to show us what we need to know to survive like she does for Cady Heron in Mean Girls?

How many times can one blogger reference Mean Girls before it gets old? The limit does not exist.

Since there is no map, no diagram, no how-to informational guide on being an adult, sub category parent, section stay-at-home-parent, sub-section library story hour, MOPS, play date, soccer practice, or violin lesson, we’re pretty much walking into these things blind when we head in for the first eleventy times. 

And because none of us know what to do, we tend to cafeteria map it – find the people who are most like us and fall in with them. That’s how we make friends, right? Things in common with other people and build a relationship off that. (The first friend I made in TN was because she was wearing an OSU shirt, so there ya go.)

Finding people we have commonalities with is super good, super important, super worthwhile endeavor.

But I never want to miss the room for the table.

If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to support each of us in all of the things that we are.

I have people in my village who totally get me as a writer, as a mom, as a homeschooler, as a crunchy hippy, as a wife, as a closeted donut/pizza/carb lover, as all of the crazy, normal, funny, weird things I am.

So while I wish there was a detailed map for adulting, I don’t wish there were tables, or at least ones that don’t expand easily.

I want there to be room at the table. I want to be welcoming and hospitable. I want to be shoving in coffee cups left and right as we add leaves and chairs and room to breathe and welcome and encourage.

There has to always be room at the table. I have to believe that. I have to believe that’s there’s always room for another mom, wife, woman, sister, friend who has her own special quirks and gifts and who needs a village.

The table needs to just keep getting bigger because we all have something to offer. Each of us. Because none of us is JUST a mom, or just an anything else.

What do you think about being JUST a mom, our June topic of the month? Share your thoughts in the comments.