Judgement via Voice Memo

The other day I got a text memo that clearly wasn’t meant for me. But it was about me.

Ah, the travails of modern life.

The message was from a mom of one of my daughter’s friends. We had been texting back and forth that day because her daughter was at our house for a playdate. This mom and I have only had a handful of brief exchanges while passing each other in the school pickup or at group gatherings. Our longest exchange had been earlier that day when I invited her into our house when she dropped her daughter off, wanting her to feel comfortable with her daughter here. We spoke for about five minutes.

When the text came, I had just finished tweezing a splinter out of her daughter’s palm. The text message was explaining to whoever the intended recipient was that, although I was “sweet,” she wouldn’t be friends with me because I wasn’t married, and she felt like married people should hang out with other married people.

Um, okay.

If I had received this sort of misfire as recently as a few years ago, it would’ve cut deep. I probably would’ve been hit with a hot rush of shame. All of my insecurities would have come out to play. I would’ve been hurt, and perhaps even secretly agreed that something about me was wrong or unworthy. I might have buried it under a smile, pretending that the situation hadn’t happened in the first place, and I certainly wouldn’t have addressed it.

Instead, my primary reaction was some form of … amusement, coupled with a flash of embarrassment for her by proxy. I almost felt bad for her, thinking about how I would feel if I were in her shoes, if the situation was reversed and my daughter was at her house in the midst of it. Awkward.

I went about taking care of the increasingly frenetic kids, leaving the phone behind. When I returned to the room there was another message from her, apologizing and saying the text was a “long story.” It struck me as the type of move you make when you’re wondering if maybe—just maybe—it’s possible to pretend like something that did just happen didn’t actually just happen. A Previous Version of Me would have swallowed the whole thing, working hard to pretend that what we both knew had just happened hadn’t actually happened. But this time, I didn’t bite. When I did reply a while later to let her know that we were on our way back to drop off her daughter, I simply said, “Ah, technology.”

When we arrived at this girl’s house, the mom was outside waiting to explain—about how she did want to be friends and so on and so forth. Her discomfort was palpable. I waited for her to finish and then told her, “Listen, just so you know, my only priority is my daughter and all of my decisions revolve around her. But, you can let this go. It’s okay.”

And it is okay. Do I want to interact with her? Not particularly—mainly because it feels two-faced to have been texting me with a very different tone than what she was actually expressing about me to another person simultaneously. But can I move on and keep things copasetic for the kids? Sure.

I’m not sure what this woman’s issue was. If she’s living in another century and doesn’t understand that the nuclear family has broken down. If she thinks I spend my time swinging off the rafters in my wild and crazy unmarried life. If there are some religious undertones.

But whatever her issue is, the great news for me is that I understand it’s exactly that: her issue, not mine. And I’m grateful that this scenario gave me an unwitting opportunity to check in with where I’m at, both in terms of my sense of self and security in my life choices. It feels great to be at a point when I’m able to stand in my power and not be swayed by what other people think about my choices—to know on a deep level that I’m doing right by myself and my family, regardless of whether or not we look like every other family.

But, in all fairness, of course I would be lying if I said I don’t make my own fair share of judgements about others without knowing their full story, as well. And it’s likely that these judgements are often based on things that aren’t really that important in the first place, that don’t get to the core of who a person actually is. It’s a good reminder that, at the end of the day, we’re all doing our best. And, especially in these times, we can all afford to take it a bit easier on each other regardless of our differences.