ModernMom: The Royal “We”

The other night I was having dinner with a group of friends whose children are all older than mine. We were discussing (or perhaps more appropriately, I was agonizing about) the myriad changes soon to be taking place in my household. I was explaining to them about the school we’d be going to and the classroom to which we’d been assigned. I told them about the other children we’d met who’d be in our class and my initial impressions of the parent population. I was, in essence, blathering on for quite some time before one of my friends interrupted to ask, “Which one of you is starting kindergarten? You or your son?” They pointed out that I’d been speaking in the plural all evening saying “we…” instead of “my son…”

Wow. As soon as they did it became abundantly clear that not only is that how I’d been speaking, it was also very much how I’d been thinking. But just when I started to consider proper boundaries and appropriate separation, the husband of our hostess returned from a little league baseball game with their son. “How was the game?” the hostess asked. “We won, 6-2,” said the dad. “We were down five runs but then we did this and then we did that and blah blah blah…” Not one person in the room questioned why he was saying “we.” It wasn’t as though he was playing the game.

So maybe that’s how it is. Maybe it will be “we” for quite some time and maybe that’s okay. After all, my son isn’t the only one whose life is about to change.