The Old Moms

I attended a beautiful baby shower yesterday, complete with perfect pre-spring weather, an immaculate home with decor that hinted but, didn't boast, of extensive travel, and attractive, attentive hostesses that kept the champage glasses brimming with mimosas.

And there were cute, young guests talking up the honoree about names and nurseries, along with those of us who were less cute, and less young, and were also there to celebrate, but also to get out of the house in the middle of a Saturday and eat something we didn't have to make. Or that included Goldfish.

The line that separated the cute, young moms and the cynical, older moms was not evident on first glance.

We still looked as polished as they did, for the most part, and everyone in that crowd does a pretty good job of keeping roots current and clothes competitively trendy. Plus, half the young moms were pregnant, so we oldies did stand a chance of looking a little better in some cases.

What divided the acorns from the oaks was the phenomenon of self-segregation that occurred during the Unwrapping of the Gifts.

I was sitting on the back porch with some other old moms, pouring third and fourth mimosas from the private stash one of the hostesses - an old mom herself - had left out there just for us. We were laughing, talking, and using mild profanity when a cute girl poked her head out onto the porch and announced, crier-like, "She's opening the GIFTS!!!"

"We'll be right in," we answered, pouring another drink, "after we finish THIS!"

Two more of 'those' later, someone said, "Maybe we'd better go be social."

So we entered through the back of the kitchen, peering into the den where the cute Guest of Honor was holding up a smocked day gown like the Shroud of Turin.

"Oooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Her ladies-in-waiting surrounding her throne of perfect fabric, with dainty plates and teeny cupcakes balanced on knees, dissolved when they saw the itty bitty baby clothes.

"I can't WAIT to see her in that!!!!" they all purred.

We, peering in from the kitchen and thus in close approximity to more champagne, agreed.

"Makes me want ANOTHER one!!!" they all cooed.

We, pouring fourth and fifth glasses of champagne from within the confines of the anti-social kitchen, disagreed.

The young moms turned to the honoree and went, "Oh! They just didn't have those high chair covers with my first! I'll need to get one with my next."

The old moms turned to each other and went, "They just didn't have that fallopian tube thingy when my last was born, so I made him get a vasectomy."

And so we became the Old Moms.

Which is fine by us, really, because what they have in cute, we make up for in sleep. What they have in novelty, we make up for in experience.

And what they have in youth, we most definitetly make up for in mimosas.