Anecdote in the park

So we went to the park near our duplex while we were in town and I was pleasantly surprised by the mothers there. The mothers in Decatur are not necessarily that friendly. To be fair, some of them are. Others don't speak to me unless it's to inform me that my child will contract worms if I don't put shoes on her. But in general, I feel not quite good enough for at-home moms whose sole focus is getting their kids into montessori school and the au pairs, well, don't generally speak English.

In Austin, the vibe seemed different. Women at the park spoke to me. I thought the moms seemed younger, too, though not as young as the ones we saw in Mississippi where the average first time mother is 23, I've since discovered. In any case, I felt like people were laid back and friendly and I liked that. And I didn't feel like I stood out as being especially young the way I feel in Decatur.

Anyway, I got into a conversation with this woman, Crystal, who had a toddler and a baby with her. As it happens, she was the nanny but that's neither here nor there. She told me what a great neighborhood this was and that sort of thing blah blah whatever. It's actually a pretty pricey neighborhood, so cool that we found a place we could afford there.

As we're talking, we see a nanny stroll up with triplets. I say it was a nanny because she was an older Latina and the children were pasty little towheads. In any case, she walks up pushing a triple stroller with these three in it. Crystal points them out. Triplets, she says. Wow, I say.
She gives me a knowing look and says In vitro. Then she rolls her eyes.

I fell out laughing. You know she's right. First child at 39, in vitro, triplets, full-time nanny. Some variation on that. So not so different from Decatur after all. Just greater variation among kinds of people, I think. This is a good thing. Central Decatur can be a little bit homogeneous.