Blame Earl Silas Tupper…. I was glad the invite was for a Linen Party cos I’m all stocked up on Tupperware and have more of the stuff than I can use. As a favour to a Mom of the Small Child’s friends, I agree to host a Linen Party here…. and only really agreed to that because it wasn’t Tupperware. Well the party rolled round (I’d largely forgotten about it) and I had about 12-15 ladies who had RSVPeed that they were coming. Only it didn’t quite turn out like that. Six ladies called or SMSed to say they suddenly couldn’t make it with a variety of creative reasons from ‘severe respiratory infection’ (which we don’t really want anyone bringing here anyway) to ‘son needs to go to the opthamologist’. Whatever the reason, I was suddenly feeling bad for the Linen lady cos she was unlikely to hit her sales targets with so few people in the room. Bizarre.
But that’s not what I started writing about. The thing is at these ridiculous and particularly femine past times is that you usually find yourself with a bunch of strangers who have only an acquaintance with the host in common and this party was no exception. Which is why I found it so strange to see an emotionally charged conversation spring up about miscarriage of all things. It started with someone making a passing comment about a friend who is 15 weeks pregnant but there has been some cause for concern over her pregnancy as she is an older first time Mum at 42 whose health has always been a bit so-so.
Well one of the other ladies, assuming the worst, started extoling the virtues of an organization called Bonnie Babes who helped her a great deal when she had a miscarriage and then went on to say that with their counsel she realized that it had all worked out for the best and she didn’t really want a third child anyway! Her disclosing such personal information to a room full of strangers had me totally bemused. But then another lady (whose history was already known to me) offered up that she had had two miscarriages before having two naturally conceived children and that her attitude was likewise philosphical … that the babies were just not ‘meant to be’ but that she didn’t feel the need for counselling because it wasn’t at all traumatic for her. And so on and so forth this conversation went until it seemed that those contributing to the conversation agreed that miscarriage is probably a positive thing after all as there was usually something wrong with the baby anyway.
How very accepting and fatalistic of them…..
How nice to be able to believe so firmly in destiny and fate…..
How inappropriate to discuss such a highly emotive, deeply personal topic with a room full of strangers!!!!
I’m not considered uptight nor prudish – in fact more than often am reputed to be quite the opposite. I’ll sit and chat about furries, anal sex, teenage rainbow parties, bondage, recreational drugs… whatever pleases have you?!?! But to discuss something like this… when you don’t know people well enough to guage their individual likely reactions? It seems fraught with danger to even bring it up.. And even though I was the only person who knew everyone in the room…. there’s no way I was sharing my experiences with them.