Practice Parenting 101

I have had many jobs when I am not writing, acting, singing in a band or lunching with my friends and their children. One, of course, has been nannying. But Nannying is different than lunching with my friends and their babies. This is something I often do; hang out, voluntarily with my girlfriends and their offspring. I don't think this is weird. I obviously enjoyed spending time with these women before they got knocked up, why wouldn't I enjoy spending time with them after? I am lucky. None of my friends have undergone any drastic personality changes since becoming mothers. Not one of them has become smug, or judgemental or overly protective of their young in a manner that would make them no longer tolerable. There is one who had a difficult pregnancy, and ALL conversations with her during that period were about THE PREGNANCY and THE COMING BABY, but we aren't that close so I've can't weigh in on what kind of a mom she is yet. But the rest of them have maintained that young mom cool that you see on the pages of US Weekly in the Stars Are Just Like Us section. They grab coffee with their babies, they shop and have lunch out and they look good doing it. I do my best to look good doing it with them, and I meet these ladies out for brunch, lunch or dinner, sip wine or lattes and cut up little pieces of pancake or chicken that the babies nibble on, seated between us in a highchair or stroller.

In some ways, it's like practice parenting for the afternoon. This is not new to me. As a nanny, I've been practice parenting since I was 20. The NYC Nanny is not expected to stay home with the kid. Piper and I (and later with her little sister Bea) haunted the neighborhood coffee shops, playgrounds, museums and libraries. We hardly ever stayed home. We took cabs and buses and the subway. Piper's first word was "TAXI" (just kidding, it was Dada, but she could hail a cab by 20 months). Piper's bright red hair and super fair complexion made it pretty clear that I was not, in fact, her mother, but people asked me about it all the time anyway. "Where did she get that red hair?" they would ask. "From her Mother." I would answer. It never bothered me to proclaim to the world that I was only the Nanny. Someone in the employ of this child's parents to watch her while they couldn't. However, now, on these lunch dates with my friends, I feel a certain anxiety about what I look like. No one thinks I'm the mother. The babies don't allow it. They are not sensitive to my sensitivities on this matter. They reach for Mommy, and when Mommy leaves the table to use the washroom, they watch her go with huge anxious eyes, reaching after her. Auntie Adrienne is no substitute for Mommy when Mommy has just left. So I am left holding the bag (the diaper bag) feeling a little left out, wondering if people are wondering what I'm doing there, childless and unmarried. Now, I realize that in reality no one is wondering this! This is LA! No one is wondering anything about me except, maybe, my racial background (more on this later as well.) But I can't help but wonder about myself, and I wonder what my friends wonder about me, my relationship with their children and with children in general.

Recently after a friend and baby date, we went home to her apartment so the baby could nap and we could chat and eat gluten free cupcakes. The baby decided not to nap and instead crap her diaper and require a bath. So, as any good friend would, I accompanied mother and child into the bathroom and "helped" with the bath. This baby is 20 months and can sit in a bath without you needing your hands on her. She plays and splashes and sings and babbles. She is very sweet and entertaining, and when Mommy went to take a phone call, I hung with Baby, splashing and getting splashed until my dress was covered in dark water blotches and my mascara was running down my face. But Baby and I were having a grand old time when Mommy returned to retrieve and wrap her in her towel. Mommy asked if Baby and I were best friends yet, which we clearly were, and then she asked me, "Do you think you want kids of your own someday?" I was taken aback. This is a friend I have known for years, since college, and I thought knew me very well. This casual question hit me like a fist, and stung like a slap, but I wasn't exactly sure why. I'm still not. "Of course." I answered, drying my face on a towel, and wringing out the skirt of my dress back into the now baby-less bath. "It just isn't the right time yet." We dried off the freshly clean babe, and I left shortly after feeling a little empty as I often do after these lunches. I got to go home and do whatever I wanted for the rest of the evening. That evening involved a lot of white wine and Thai food and a movie out with my lovely boyfriend. It was not restricted by anything, not a bed time, nor a feeding of anyone but ourselves, and this is the type of night if which my friend might be envious. But if she is, she doesn't say it. None of them do. They all ask when I'm going to join their club or if I want to, as if to imply that if I wanted to, I would have done it already.