I smiled at a mother as I walked into the school grounds the other day. She looked me up and down, before looking away pointedly. I smiled more and continued walking. Maybe a smile is too hard for you to share, but mine is not and you are welcome to it.
The school yard contains sour faced women with lips pursed like they’ve been eating lemons. I wonder if this is the only time they get to themselves and how long has it been since they had an orgasm that made them gasp and curled their toes, blackening their vision at the edges. Too long, I suspect, they look like they need one.
I wander through, smiling, noticing who smiles back, who looks uncomfortable and who avoids eye contact. I don’t judge them. Everyone has a story and I don’t know theirs – even though I’d like to.
Give me your broken, your dark, your deep. I want to collect your stories and collate them, turning them into a work of art.
Who are you?
What makes you smile secretly to yourself?
Tell me these things and I will keep them safe, right here with me.
As I leave the school, having collected my small skipping daughter, we chat to each other and she complains loudly that home is where we’re headed. I cite things to do, but really, it’s the urge to write pretty words and the exhaustion from the shopping centres that sends us straight home at the end of the day.
We leave, passing the groups of women, huddled in corners, all with their own stories to tell.
I wonder if they consider themselves cliquey and then realise that you can’t see the clique once you’re inside it.
Mirrored glass walls protect you from the smiles of strangers and I am left wondering:
What is their story?
I don’t know what it is honey.You certainly look normal enough. Surely you still cant be tarred with my brush can you? You haven’t been wearing odd socks to school pick up have you? The Lemon Mothers HATE it when you do that.
I think, in my experience, that they know they are cliquey and proud of it.
They love excluding, they feel wanted and special and rare, and this is their cheerleader mentality left over, carried over from high school.
Ideally, we grow up: we realize exclusion is not kind and we include others. Ideally.
Some people still get a thrill out of looking at outsiders, they imagine us to be jealous, green eyed.
Actually, we are whispering prayers of gratitude that we’re not them.
I look for the loner, and extend myself. Why? Because I know what it feels like to not be included. It doesn’t feel nice.
I want to know how they get in the clique to start with!? Do they have older kids who went there before, and the clique started then?
Maybe they were all loners who banded together and became cliquey?
Do their kids all do some obnoxious sport outside of school together? Like polo or something?
I wish I knew. But what I do know, is that they’re more likely to lead petty little lives, always concerned with what Jane Smith is doing and trying to keep up. They’ve forgotten how to smile because while on the outside they’d like everyone to think they have it all, they actually have nothing.
I wonder if this is a secret that every writer holds.
My story, your story, their story … some day we’ll tell them in detail, leaving all the juicy, intimate, desperate parts in that in the now, are too close to who we are and what we seek to share with everyone else. Isn’t that what memoirs are for? If you want an insight, read someone else’s blog. Everyone has their Utopia, everyone has lost some aspect of it … or perhaps, never realised it’s full reality.
ahhh, the No Vacancy sign … but you are as right as you are generous, they have their stories to tell, they fear judgment and rejection, they find it all too hard and have washed their hands of new life experiences.
that smile of yours is a secret sign that you are up for it, open, still willing to grow and learn … keep smiling that smile, coz if i ever see you around, i’ll be smiling back. xt
Hi Veronica!! I live in Argentina. It’s very funny your description of lemon moms. I felt really identified with you. Every day I have to pick up my son from school I try to arrive just on time so I don’t have to wait with other mums on the school gate. I’m just tired of smiling to mums that looks at me as if they never met me before, even when our children play together. So when I get to school in time I just do mobile cleaning and deletes all my old messages and do as if I where very busy chatting with someone on the phone. I hate lemon mums 🙁
Regards from Argentina.
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