On Thursday mornings, I take both girls to a music class at the university down the street from us. It’s an award winning class, hugely popular, kind of hard to get into if you don’t enroll super-early. We got lucky, and managed to snag two spots for the girls at a late date. And my goodness, am I happy that we did! This class is amazing and I think that I enjoy it more than the girls. It’s a small class, made up of mostly toddlers, my girls are the second set of siblings in the class. And there’s a lot of dancing and singing and playing neat instruments that’s really appealing to the girls. But I like it so much because I finally feel like I’m starting to connect with mothers. And this has, thus far, been very difficult for me to do.

At my daughter’s preschool, there is this clique of moms who all went to college together, who’s husbands all went to college together, and they just move around together like this tight little unit. And this unit has been completely impenetrable for me. I introduced myself to the mothers of the kids in Pea’s class when they had a meet & greet at the end of the summer, and now here we are, in and out of the same classroom twice a day, twice a week, and some of these mothers act like they don’t even see me! What is that? Like if you say hi to me, make some inane but polite conversation, you will be betraying your little clan?

But in this music class, amongst this group of moms, I am finally starting to feel like the old me. The one who used to laugh a lot and who didn’t take herself so seriously. These women are sharp. They are well-educated and attractive and funny and confident, everything that I like to think that I am. And it just feels so good to be in this group. Laughing at our kids as they bump into each other while dancing. Singing silly songs. Getting random hugs from one another’s kids. I love it. We walk into class together and walk out of class together, chatting and laughing and joking. I have missed this. This is how I thought motherhood would be. And it was devastating to find out, at least with the women at Pea’s school, that this was not going to be the case. So this new group of women, of mothers, just feels like a second chance for me. That there is hope that I will find like-minded women – mothers – out there who will think I am as interesting and witty and worth knowing as these gals do. Lucky me.