clog mom revisited
I still remember her vividly. She really imprinted on my mind, the way mysterious strangers do sometimes. I was a freshly post-grad nanny tasked with picking up four children after school, and she was a mom in her early forties (I think) picking up her own bunch of kids. I saw her daily, from afar, and couldn’t help but somewhat closely study her actions and selfhood. It was a very chaotic playground, a literal frenzy of kids and caregivers, and she was such a calm presence in it – you could call her “grounded,” but I think even more she was moored, the perfect foil to how unmoored I felt. Her most defining outer characteristic: a pair of beat-up extremely comfortable looking dansko clogs worn daily, sometimes with beautiful colorwork wool socks, until it was too icy to wear them. I first wrote about Clog Mom on December 2, 2015 (hello baby b due date pre-anniversary! weird!), and now I’m thinking about her again.
I simply noticed her, day by day. I overheard her talking with other parents sometimes, but the information I gathered about her was almost purely visual. She had this one wool sweater I still remember. And the chartreuse scarf that I mention in the essay. A well-fitting pair of medium wash jeans. She sometimes wore her hair in milkmaid braids, pinned up across her head, and sometimes down and loose. I don’t think she wore any makeup. It was clear that this woman didn’t own a lot of clothing – rather that she had a few beautiful favorite things that she wore with joy nearly daily. Her kids were dressed similarly, seen in the same beautiful coats and boots over school uniforms each day. She drove a big weird van. A rosy baby boy almost always on her hip, until he’d beg to get down and run after the other kids, though they played too rough around him. She didn’t seem too worried about that, or anything. I’m sure she had lots of worries though.
She stuck out to me for a lot of reasons, but I think the biggest thing was her comfort – in her body, in her clothes, with her children, talking with other parents. I’m not assuming that this woman’s life was tidy or perfect, but I saw in her something I was desperately grasping for myself at the time – a sense of self that was solid and clear, almost poetic in its specificity. I yearned to grow into a woman like that. I still do. I think I might be on my way.
I wonder what kind of parent I will be – to this little boy I’m just beginning to be acquainted with in kicks and sleeplessness, to the other children I hope will join him in the future. I wonder what kind of woman I’m becoming. I remember finding this red pair of boots early last winter in a secondhand store and thinking these belong to me – the way I knew so clearly that they suited me and the life I’m slowly growing into. When I was twenty-two, I bought clogs on eBay to be like Clog Mom and wore them to the playground, almost sheepishly, wondering if she would notice me wearing them. Who knows if she did, and if she did it’s unlikely that she’d be vain enough to ever link my footwear to herself. Now, I still wear those clogs frequently, but they’re simply mine, not tied to any mystical older woman, just to my own feet, my own life, my own patterns of self that I’m carving slowly and more confidently all the time.
You know episode three of the second season of Fleabag when Fleabag goes to the bar with Kristin Scott Thomas? How she speaks magnificently about menopause and tells Fleabag, “Don’t worry. It does get better.” and the whole interaction is something Fleabag desperately needed and couldn’t have known to ask for? I sort of feel like I went to the bar with Clog Mom and she told me all those same things, though we exchanged no words, enjoyed no martinis. It was as if her whole person were assuring me, “Don’t worry. It does get better.” I couldn’t have known to ask for that.
I’m glad I never met her, never got to know her, never was invited to her house, never sat at her table. I think she was the sort of person who would invite a person like me over, but, yes, I’m glad she didn’t. We never spoke. I think that would have changed the meaning – probably welcoming in more richness and complexity, but perhaps too much. I didn’t need that from her, I simply needed to watch her from afar when I was twenty-two and very unsure but moving forward. A woman like a lighthouse. I have such a simple vision of her, and that simplicity is encouraging me right now. In all my complexity, I hope I can be simple for someone else too. I hope I can assure someone else that they’ll keep moving forward, that it will get better, whatever better is. If not now, then in my forties, wearing my clogs and forgetting why I’m wearing them, un-self-consciously picking up my kids and taking them home.
Here’s the original essay, published on my first post-grad blog on December 2, 2015:
(excuse my younger writing voice. I’ve promised myself that I would never criticize old writing of mine because when I hear other women do it it makes me feel so sad. So no criticism, just acknowledgement of being a different writer and person five years ago. I’m proud of who I was then, too, and the way writing came out of me. What a wonder to change and grow! And also to still hear myself as I am now in these words, peeking out!)
Ode to Clog Mom
Each day I stand outside the city elementary school to pick up the kids I nanny, I see the same moms, shuffling up in yoga pants and parkas, North Face fleeces, trousers, boots of all fuzzy shapes and sizes. When I’m placed in a situation like this where all the moms know each other and I am the brand new nanny on the scene, sort of incognito and able to blend into the brick, it feels sort of necessary, or, say, mandated that I people-watch my brains out. It’s my civic duty to do so, or at least that’s the way I see it. So I do. I watch all the moms, all sorts of moms, all very nondescript mom-ish in their demeanor and appearance, their chatting together, glancing every so often at the playground where all the children wallop each other (my, they play rough these days!). I know them all, I see them all, I have little names for them in my head and I try to eavesdrop on conversations, only sometimes.
And then there’s clog mom.
You know when you see someone somewhere and even just the sight of them hits you in a certain way? Like you know them, and they know you? Like you and they are the same, somehow? That’s how I feel about clog mom.
First of all, she is beautiful, like all glowy and dewey. Beautiful in a really simple human way. She’s the sort of person who smiles when she talks to people, like she can’t help it, like she just loves to smile. She has this fantastic longish brown hair that she sometimes wears in a bun on the very tippy top of her head and sometimes she wears it in milkmaid braids criss crossed across the tippy top of her head, and I think that’s the best.
She wears great clothes, mostly in the hues of black and grey and navy, except now that it’s winter she wears a grey coat, yes, but she tops it with a very fabulous chartreuse knit scarf, which I have to say was a surprising and delightful development. She wears stripes, she wears solids, she wears great skinny jeans that are not at all too inappropriately tight, and, best of all, she wears great clogs.
That’s what clinched it for me. The clogs. She was all-together wonderful already, and the clogs were the cream cheese icing on the spice cake. Simple, perfect black clogs that she wears every day. I love clog mom.
She also has six gorgeous children, five girls and a boy, all blonde and glowing just as much as their mom. All dressed in very good kid clothing, just the right amount of color, and fantastic boots, I’m sure passed down from kid to kid. One of the girls is literally a carbon copy of clog mom. They could be twins.
I don’t watch her creepily, although it may seem like I do from this account. No, I just notice her. I see her choices, her likes and dislikes, her aesthetics, her love of life and her family, and I appreciate her deeply for these things. She and I, we are the same somehow, or at least I feel like we are, because I don’t think I’d notice her so much if we weren’t. And, secretly, I hope she notices me too.
I wish I could be friends with clog mom, hear her stories, drink coffee with her every now and again, walk to her house, know her kids’ names and hers too for that matter. But I don’t think we will ever be friends. In fact, I don’t think I’ll even ever speak to her. It’s unspoken for now, and maybe I like it that way.
I think someday I may be quite like her, with clogs and stripes, hair piled on top of my head, a team of great kids, a blonde baby on my hip, and a perfectly surprising chartreuse scarf. We will see. For now, I see clog mom, and I notice her. Each day, I notice her. And, in doing so, I remember to notice myself, too, even just a tiny bit more than I usually do. Every time I wear my own clogs, I feel just a bit more like clog mom, just a bit more like myself. I stand a little taller. I smile a little more. Noticing. It’s a good thing.