IT IS THURSDAY. Thursday is the new Sunday in our house—as decreed by the higher power at our Park Avenue preschool. Thursday is the dreaded school chapel day.
Chapel goes something like this: children arrive dressed for the Titanic crossing—bows, cashmere sweaters, itchy tights, even crinoline. They shuffle with one or both of their parents into the chapel room, where a very talented group of teachers play and sing their heart out to happy God music. The main storyteller relates a sugar-infused Bible story such as David just wrestling Goliath or Moses taking a boating vacation, or my personal favorite—when Adam and Eve eat forbidden fruit, they are punished by having to wear fancy party clothes. Then we all sing songs, while sitting on the floor holding on to our squirming children, and wonder how we can possibly stand up again since our legs have gone to sleep.
There is an order to how the parents and children sit in chapel. The billionaires sit along the front sides of the room. They tend to be cooler than the rest of us and usually have only one parent in attendance. They don’t have to care if anyone likes them so they don’t show up just to be seen. The billionaires rarely wear business suits and seem to know it’s all right to have a wife with a little paunch. They have hired enough help to insulate them from the annoying millionaire parents who are pining for a playdate. Instead they have their kids play with either fellow billionaire offspring or the full-scholarship kids, of which there are three. They seem genuinely enchanted by their children.
In the front of the chapel sit a group that Bruce, who used to hail from this land of exclusion, calls the “PA Ladies,” the not-employed-out-of-the-house, Park Avenue mothers. The school thinks PA stands for “parents association.” These are the wives of the millionaires who want to hang with the billionaires. They feel the need to have two adults frame their three-foot kid and they work the crowd like a networking slam. They titter back and forth with their grown-up friends while insisting their kids remain quiet, making a low-level noise that’s distracting. They give their children the names of expired ancestors such as Baxter, Ford, and Wyeth. Not coincidentally, some are also the names of New York Stock Exchange companies. Their men wear sharp suits and smell good, and their women wear triple-ply cashmere tops tossed over super-tight low-riding jeans. Their abdominals that occasionally peek from beneath their sweaters reveal nothing about having had multiple children because they only stay pregnant for eight months, induce early, have a Victoria’s Secret C, which is the cesarean combined with a tummy tuck, before returning to their two-hour daily workouts. Their shoes tend to be expensive, with delicate high heels that rarely hit pavement, and they have jewelry usually purchased from each other. They are the peer group of my coworkers’ wives and they look at me either with pity for not marrying one of their tribe or with what I believe is the bad-mother glare, like they know something about my kids that I don’t. It doesn’t help that my daughter’s contribution to the “Whose Mommy Am I?” bulletin board contains a drawing of a straggly haired lady with text transcribed from her mouth stating, “My mommy only likes to read the Wall Street Journal.” The other darlings’ pictures state, “My mommy reads Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!” or “Goodnight Moon.” Who is that sucky mommy who only reads the Journal? Needless to say, we don’t socialize too much.
Toward the back of the room are the working schlumps—the oddballs, including me and three other moms in business wear. We tote oversized bags with electronic gear all set to silence. We sit on the carpeted floor with the most difficulty, given the way we are dressed, and we try our hardest to not check our phones during chapel time. We don’t necessarily want to hang with the billionaires but wouldn’t mind living like them.
The other parent type that sits with us are the one-offs. There’s one jock mom clad in spandex who pushes a double stroller from somewhere far away and begins each day looking exhausted. There is the token overweight mother who wears orthopedic sandals with socks—either a woman completely comfortable in her own skin, or someone who has totally waved the white flag of surrender. Who can compete with this crowd? Also with us sit two former rock stars who aren’t aging well, three adopted girls from China who live on 5th Avenue, and the two African American students of the school: one has a dad who is the CEO of a media company and one is the son of another student’s chauffeur.
Every Thursday, as I did with Kevin and now do with Brigid and Owen, I commit my skirt-suited bottom to a piece of floor in the back of the room with the rest of the misfits. We are happy there.