Blogging mommies, blogging women

Oscar (what, you have never read Oscar? Go read Oscar!!) does a nice tribute to moms who blog.

I, too, am enamored with this group: their stories are poignant and often brilliantly insightful. Their dilemmas are real and heartfelt. Their blogs are among the most captivating to read. And whereas the typical blogger makes a million references to every nuance of her or his latest little worry or disgruntlement (I include myself in this group), blogging moms are living the saintly lives where internal peace of mind always always has to be put aside when a kid calls. And a kid calls very often in the course of a childhood.

Oscar asked me if I minded being “outed” with my parenthood. He was right to ask as, for the most part, I keep my own daughters out of the blog. I traded away the right to comment here on their lives by writing under my own name. True, they live far away (in a small city on the east coast, easily recognizable by the careful reader as I visit there often enough) and they are older (23 and 20) and so stories of toddler antics would have to be replaced with their more adult cleverness and sharp wit. And they are the wittiest of all witty people out there! But I stay silent about their world.

One question that I have for you, the reader: so what has happened to all the women who are done with child-rearing? Are they too exhausted to blog? With one notable exception, every female blogger that I know is either prior to or in the midst of child rearing. And even if she decides not to have children – she is definitely under the age of fifty. Young voices permeate the blogosphere: they set the tone even as they write from a history that is very very short.

Oh point me to the blogging woman who is a decade older than I am! Missing, she is missing from my list of daily blogs. [The one small consolation is that Ocean has linked me with readers who fall into that group. They are among my favorite correspondents. They pick up things in Ocean – small, deliberate things that, with rare exceptions, a younger reader will have missed, being, it seems, forever in a hurry to get to the punch line and move on to the next blog.]

Still, I am mesmerized by the singular and yet familiar stories of the mommy blogs. And I read them with a smile, because I know that eighteen years of mommy-sainthood brings you the reward of an adult friendship that is indescribably wonderful. And strong. And enduring. Like no other.