By Anna Kunnecke
It's so awkward here to go to peoples' houses. Living spaces are tiny, so everyone crowds around the one small table while the kids careen over and under everything. The hostess always works too hard and won't let anyone into the galley-shaped kitchen because that would be uncomfortably intimate. The kids are scolded for going into the next room, where the family sleeps together at night. It seems logical to me to send them out of the living room so the mothers can talk, but there's obviously an invisible line demarcating the uchi and soto--the inner and outer, or public and private. Since I don't know the rules, I keep quiet in the midst of the chaos. I am at my first Mama-kai, and I am in unfamiliar territory. The other mothers at my daughter's daycare are friendly and warm, and I enjoy the brief chats we have as we pick up our kids, but I've never encountered them in a social situation before and I am exceedingly nervous.
Worst of all, because several of the women are pregnant or breastfeeding, there isn't even any alcohol to lubricate things.
So I sit there stiffly, enjoying the elegant dishes the other women have put together and cringing over the plate of supermarket appetizers I bought on my way there. (Note to self: when the hostess says, "Oh, just bring something store-bought, no need to make anything," next time remember that SHE DOES NOT MEAN IT.) We try to chat, but it is strange. We've seen each other deal with tantrum-throwing kids; watched each other weep as we walked away from our children that first hard week; overheard conversations with teachers over potty-training, sleep habits, biting, and nose-picking. But I don't know anything about them. For instance, what they do all day while their kids play with my daughter.
But man oh man, is it ever fascinating. The group includes two university professors, an accountant, a midwife, and someone who says dismissively, "Oh, I just work at a traditional Japanese company." Turns out that she is a fiery trailblazer; her company keeps changing the rules in subtle ways to discourage her from working--they can't outright fire her, that's illegal, but they mess with her hours and sick days--but she is wily and crafty and brave and she has hung in there. She says rather shyly, "I think it's easier now for the other women there." I want to stand up and kiss her, but instead I sip my nonalcoholic beer and nod. I nod so hard my chopsticks wobble. We dissect maternity leave and after-school care; I get the dirt on which local schools contain six-year-old hoodlums and which ones are better; we all tell our birth stories and compare milk output. In other words, we have the talks that mothers all over the world must be having.
Suddenly I realize that I am totally over my fear and in spite of the face that I am missing about 25% of the vocab these educated women are using, I am having an absolute ball.
I can't wait to hang out with them again. But I learned something. Next time, I'm taking my own beer.
It's so awkward here to go to peoples' houses. Living spaces are tiny, so everyone crowds around the one small table while the kids careen over and under everything. The hostess always works too hard and won't let anyone into the galley-shaped kitchen because that would be uncomfortably intimate. The kids are scolded for going into the next room, where the family sleeps together at night. It seems logical to me to send them out of the living room so the mothers can talk, but there's obviously an invisible line demarcating the uchi and soto--the inner and outer, or public and private. Since I don't know the rules, I keep quiet in the midst of the chaos. I am at my first Mama-kai, and I am in unfamiliar territory. The other mothers at my daughter's daycare are friendly and warm, and I enjoy the brief chats we have as we pick up our kids, but I've never encountered them in a social situation before and I am exceedingly nervous.
Worst of all, because several of the women are pregnant or breastfeeding, there isn't even any alcohol to lubricate things.
So I sit there stiffly, enjoying the elegant dishes the other women have put together and cringing over the plate of supermarket appetizers I bought on my way there. (Note to self: when the hostess says, "Oh, just bring something store-bought, no need to make anything," next time remember that SHE DOES NOT MEAN IT.) We try to chat, but it is strange. We've seen each other deal with tantrum-throwing kids; watched each other weep as we walked away from our children that first hard week; overheard conversations with teachers over potty-training, sleep habits, biting, and nose-picking. But I don't know anything about them. For instance, what they do all day while their kids play with my daughter.
But man oh man, is it ever fascinating. The group includes two university professors, an accountant, a midwife, and someone who says dismissively, "Oh, I just work at a traditional Japanese company." Turns out that she is a fiery trailblazer; her company keeps changing the rules in subtle ways to discourage her from working--they can't outright fire her, that's illegal, but they mess with her hours and sick days--but she is wily and crafty and brave and she has hung in there. She says rather shyly, "I think it's easier now for the other women there." I want to stand up and kiss her, but instead I sip my nonalcoholic beer and nod. I nod so hard my chopsticks wobble. We dissect maternity leave and after-school care; I get the dirt on which local schools contain six-year-old hoodlums and which ones are better; we all tell our birth stories and compare milk output. In other words, we have the talks that mothers all over the world must be having.
Suddenly I realize that I am totally over my fear and in spite of the face that I am missing about 25% of the vocab these educated women are using, I am having an absolute ball.
I can't wait to hang out with them again. But I learned something. Next time, I'm taking my own beer.
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