Reaching Out

         A friend of mine who is pregnant recently remarked to me that colleagues who had never spoken a word to her before now stop her to chat in the halls. "I understand," she said. "Creating another human being is miraculous. And now I'm 'part of the club.' But isn't there some other common ground?" I understood what she meant, remembered how, when I was pregnant, every conversation seemed to begin or end with "How are you feeling?" or "When are you due?" There does seem to be something about the miracle of pregnancy and childbirth that allows people to reach out to total strangers (sometimes too literally-- Can I touch your belly?) in a way that they ordinarily wouldn't.
        I never hear "How are you feeling?" now, and at times I sort of miss those days of pregnancy, before all the concern and questions shifted to the babies. I admire women so much who eschew the medicalization of childbirth and have their babies at home, but to tell the truth, I kind of liked the hospital. Sure, they wake you up every couple of hours to check your vitals unnecessarily, but it is also the culmination of concern for you, the mom. I wanted someone to bring me meals on a tray and take away the dishes afterwards. I wanted the attention, however medicalized, of the midwives’ post-partum visits, the lactation specialists, the nurses, the pediatricians. I wanted someone to take away my babies for whatever test or shot and bring them back to me cozily swaddled and fast asleep.
        Now "How are you feeling?" has been thoroughly replaced by "You really have your hands full!" That statement is so ubiquitous that you’d think by now, after over a year of hearing it on virtually every outing, I’d be sick of it. (The girls are only eleven months, but even before they were born, I was often informed "You’re really going to have your hands full!" by total strangers, as if I wasn't scared enough.) And although I am sometimes bored by the lack of originality of the comment, I never actually tire of hearing it. Partly, I think that’s because I appreciate the acknowledgement that I’m doing something that’s difficult and that others recognize that fact. When I was running my one and only marathon, I certainly never tired of hearing the cheers of complete strangers, although "Way to go!" and "You’re doing great!" are hardly any less cliche. Mostly, though, I feel grateful for the way in which my handful of kids allows people to reach out, to breach the space that separates us. Without them, every passing raises questions: make eye contact or not? say hi or not? respond to "How’s it going?" or just accept it as a rhetorical greeting? Too often it seems that we live in a society in which even a simple greeting can seem an invasion of someone’s privacy.
       There used to be an assistant principal at the school where I worked who would walk right by a teacher in the halls without any kind of greeting or acknowledgement. Since my state of mind around my superiors seems to be perpetually stuck in the third grade, I felt constantly on edge around her, worrying that I was in trouble. On the other hand, my best friend in high school prided herself on unfailingly greeting passersby, whenever and wherever. She'd be neck and neck with a competitor in a cross country race and would still call out a cheerful "Hi!" if a recreational jogger happened to be passing by. Clearly, context is everything. What works in Piedmont, Alabama at a McDonalds at five in the morning wouldn't pass muster, I'm sure, on a New York City sidewalk. But still, in general, our culture's norms are pretty nebulous. I'd love to read the sample conversation in the first chapter of an "American English as a Foreign Language" textbook.
         Student A: Hey.
         Student B: How's it going?
         Student A: (No response needed. Discontinue eye contact and keep walking.)
         So, even though I wonder why "You've really got your hands full!" became the stock phrase that everyone uses, I'll take it. I'll take the smiles, the looks of wonder, the tacit encouragement. And I'll keep assuming that "You've really got your hands full" really means "Wow! I'm impressed!" and not "Better you than me!"