Waiting for Birdy

Okay. I know I am way late to the party on this one; everyone has read it, everyone has blogged about how great it is. But I just finished it (greedily, when I was supposed to be saving it for our upcoming holiday), and I loved it!

It's funny, the way Catherine writes is so personal, so much like a conversation you'd have with a friend, that I do feel like she is a friend of mine. I feel like she lives just down the street, and we're getting together for a barbecue later. Or more, since she lives on the East Coast, I feel like I went to high school with her, and we exchange emails and the occasional phone call about how funny our kids are.

Birdy is just the same age as Isaac, and I feel like they would probably get along fine. Isaac is much more like Birdy than he is like Ben, in temperament at least. Vivian seems to me to have Ben's more mellow, thoughtful temperament.

You see? How weird is it that I'm comparing my own kids to hers, as if we are great friends? I've never met her!

The whole time I read the book, I would laugh in recognition at something Catherine would do, and then the next page, I would laugh again, not because I recognized it as something I would do, but because it's something I wouldn't do. Catherine and I are so different, and so alike, as mothers. And I think that's what becoming a mother does--it gains you entry into this wonderful club full of people who feel exactly the same way you do, even if they would handle a situation differently than you do.

At one point in the book, and I remember this happened when I read the same anecdote in her column, I was laughing so hard I actually cried. Even Lance was impressed.

So that's my gushing for the day. Buy the book, you'll love it. And when you buy that book, be sure to buy a children's one, for Jul, too.