There are a couple of families of my ilk at the ALDI I frequent.<\/p>\n
Frugal women with long hair, wearing skirts and with children in tow.<\/p>\n
I silently appraise them, count their children (oh, yes I do!), and note all the daughters also in skirts. I sort through the possible categories in my mind. Gothardite\/ATI. Biblical patriarchy. Quiverful. Every category I try to place them in has negative connotations in my mind – but every time I see them, I smile. These are people like me.<\/p>\n
I see them silently appraising me. Mentally calculating. Am I one of them? I have the hair, the skirts, the frugality. But only one child at my age? And the skirts that show my knees? Occasionally, a bra strap peeking out? I am a woman not like them.<\/p>\n
When I see these women, I assume that they love children and family. I assume that they haven’t bought into our culture’s maxim that children are too expensive. I assume that they love their husbands and submit to them. I assume that they think there are differences between men and women and that femininity is something to be appreciated. I assume that they are like me.<\/p>\n
When I see these women, I assume that they don’t use birth control, that they went straight from their fathers’ homes to their husbands’. I assume that they think that femininity means always wearing skirts and modesty means making those skirts long. I assume that they’re not like me.<\/p>\n
Every time I see them, I rejoice to find women like me. Every time I see them, I sorrow that even in this I have found women not like me. <\/p>\n
I very clearly don’t belong to mainstream mommy culture – my values, beliefs, opinions, and practices are frequently in opposition to theirs. I feel a great kinship with these women I see in the grocery store, these women who are so counterculture.<\/p>\n
I wish I could be a part of them. Not because I want to take up the things they believe and do that I do not – but because I want to be a part of their group. I want to have friends, even just A friend who feels like I do or acts like I do. <\/p>\n
I’ve probably seen her before, the woman who was in front of me in line with her two little girls. We’ve probably appraised each other before. But this time, after the appraisal, she turned to me and struck up a little conversation – the small talk we have in stores, about leaving our reusable shopping bags at home in a neat pile. It was ordinary and extraordinary. <\/p>\n
And it made my heart yearn, like running into these women so like me and not like me often does. It made me yearn for a friend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are a couple of families of my ilk at the ALDI I frequent. Frugal women with long hair, wearing skirts and with children in tow. I silently appraise them, count their children (oh, yes I do!), and note all the daughters also in skirts. I sort through the possible categories in my mind. Gothardite\/ATI. … Read more Like me, not like me<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15838"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15863,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15838\/revisions\/15863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}