Grupset

Yesterday Herr Guitar was in the front yard with Angus, shooting some hoopz with a baby soccer ball and the garbage can that holds our recycling, when a little boy who lives down the street pulled up on his bike and asked, "Are you a dad or a kid?"

Isn't that the cutest thing you've ever heard? "Are you a dad or a kid?"

It's also very deep, man, because for me, the worst part of being a mom is the fact that I'll never again be a kid. More importantly, I'll never again be the baby - which is what I am best at. Now I'm a mom, so I have to suck it up and deal with the walking pneumonia. I'm a mom, so I can't jet off to East Berlin with a hangover. I'm a mom, so I can't have an emotional breakdown in the middle of the street. And I can't be an asshole to my mom anymore because she is a Grandma, which is the most revered and special type of human you can be. Grandmas are slower and more brittle than the rest of us. They need TLC and chocolate chip cookies and air kisses, and they don't need shit from some punk adult with a runny nose or a dirty diaper.

But "Are you a dad or a kid?" is a strange question to ask someone who is 37. True, he looks about 25, except when he just gets back from the barber and looks about 19. But the kid who was asking looked about 6. And HG is 6'4". I mean, how young can he possibly look? HG was relieved that he could answer "I'm a dad" - a single, childless 37-year-old would have had to launch into a complicated explanation.

It reminded me of something that happened a few weeks ago, when I got an upset phone call at work. It was HG: "Have you seen the cover of New York this week?" I hadn't, my copy had only just arrived in the mail, and it was in his hands. When I got home, he held up the magazine, featuring this article about "Grups". The cover line: Forever Youngish. Then something about how these days, no one wants to be a grown up. The cover was a page of photos of different late 20- to late 30- and early 40-something guys in the same outfit. Hoodie, messenger bag, jeans, ipod. On the inside, the same types of photos, but with guys wearing their babies in Baby Bjorns and Snuglis. If Herr Guitar was included in one of the photos, he would have fit right in. (There was also a page of women, who were dressed kind of like me but with designer trench coats - I am either a fashion-backward or a transvestite grup, I guess, because I tend to dress more like the men in the hoodies.) The article refers to today's maturing hipsters as grups, which is a Star Trek reference having something to do with a planet of children - "grup" is a conjunction of grown-up. On planet New York, we are both the grown ups and the children.

(Full disclosure: I have never seen an episode of Star Trek. I don't get it, I don't like it, I don't want to know about it. I recently had someone say to me, "you must be a Trekkie" and I was horrified. How could I be so misunderstood? And while it will probably cost me readers, I should admit here that I also don't like Lord of the Rings [best naps I've ever taken were while seeing those films with HG - what's with all the walking?] or even, I have to say, Star Wars. In fact, although I have seen all of the Star Wars movies - minus the fifth [or is it the second?] one, Attack of the Clones, which nobody saw - I have no idea what happened. I have this writing software that uses the plot of Star Wars as an example, and I'm completely lost. My mind turns off when sci fi is around. Also when medieval is around. And elfin magic. I just don't get it.)

Anyway, I understood HG's frustration, because there are few things more embarrassing than to be called on your shit by a New York Magazine article. But the more we read, the less gruppie we felt. A grup is like a hipster yuppie that has money and kids and is pushing 40 but acts 22. That's me and HG, sort of - I mean it's more us than it is our same-age in-laws in other states. Grups still dress slacker/grunge except now they pay $600 for the perfect pair of ripped jeans. We authentically ripped our jeans in the grunge era and still wear them because you can't buy normal, non-ripped or non faded jeans any more. They put their kids in ironic t-shirts and make them listen to Death Cab, along with many other bands even I have never heard of. Swaddlini does have Led Zeppelin, Johnny Rotten and Blondie t-shirts, but for the most part he dresses business-casual infant, and he prefers Glen Campbell's Greatest Hits and With the Beatles to Yeah Yeah Yeahs (though he does like Cornelius). And our ghetto ipod, which is actually an Archos Jukebox, sits unused in my desk drawer. I was horrified to learn that Level 2 or intermediate grups are currently reading "Indecision" by Benjamin Kunkel, because I just finished that, but grups in that level also listen to the Killers and aspire to be Natalie Portman's character in Garden State - which are both repellent to this particular grup. Level 3 or advanced grups aspire to be Sarah Silverman and Steve Malkmus, which I can get behind, but they also wear L.A.M.B. sneakers, and I'm just not there yet...

Honestly, the worst part about finding out that you are a grup is finding out that you are an out-of-it grup. I've heard of some of the music and book references, but hadn't heard of any of the bars. I didn't even know that Dora the Explorer was cooler than Thomas the Tank Engine (seriously, some grup in the story admonishes his kid for liking Thomas - actually telling the kid "Thomas sucks!").

It's funny because a few months ago we were having brunch (oh yeah, grups have brunch a lot) at Enid's in Williamsburg, and noticed that Enid's is stuck somewhere around 1993 - in terms of the music, what people wear and look like, etc. - but everyone there is too young to be stuck in 1993, except for us. We wondered what other people our age look like. (I'm always shocked when I watch Dr. Phil or Judge Judy and hear woman who looks 47 say she's 23 - guess it's a red state thing?) But I guess that is what people our age do look like - like 27-year-olds stuck in 1993, with a smattering of crow's feet. And toddlers with their chubby fingers on the zeitgeist of counterculture New York. And fabulously ripped jeans.

Did I Say I Missed the Office? I Must've Been on Peyote

It's Day 50 of my being back in the office. True, that's counting weekends and all of the many days I have been out due to snow or illness or laziness or errand running, but I am counting those as work days because while they contain free hours, they are not free. They are only breaks in the soulless tedium that is my working-slash-breast milk-pumping life. Other breaks include frequent trips to Starbucks, and book reading on the subway.

One fortunate side effect of my return to the workforce is my newfound place on the battlefield of the Mommy Wars which, according to Katie Couric and other distinguished journalists, are raging across America. However, I am torn as to which side to fight for, as I have been self-loathing as both a working mother and a homemaker. So I have decided to remain a pacifying mediator. Why must we argue, when we are every one of us covered in baby puke? Can we not find some middle ground in the fact that our children do not let us sleep? When our babies yank our hair and bite our nipples, do we not cry out, do we not bleed?

When I was at home with Swaddlini, we giggled and cooed and rolled around on floor mats listening to Beethoven muzak. We also ate raw cookie dough and watched Starting Over and Judging Amy and sometimes took a nip from the cooking wine. Ok, that was just me. I was super efficient - making my own applesauce, doing a load of laundry every day, feeding the family on $150 a week. But I rarely showered or went outside. Swad and I kept student hours - never missing the Colbert Report or Conan, sleeping in well past morning rush hour, and napping in the gloaming.

Now I can't keep my eyes open past 10, I'm up with the sun dressing and feeding and walking and lugging - so much lugging - in an attempt to get out the door. I go nowhere without my trusty breast pump. And the bottles. And the icepack. And my big bag of miscellany that holds more than Mary Poppins' did. And did I mention that my work is pointless and boring yet lucrative? But bored as I am, I can't bring myself to write something pointed and exciting yet not lucrative. So I sit and listen to my "Left of the Dial: Dispatches from the 80s Underground" box set (which is excellent, BTW) and count the hours until Donald Rumsfeld leaves the White House or I get to go home, whichever comes first.

Why would anyone want to fight for or against either existence? Answer: No one does. The Mommy Wars are bullshit. We all would like to be fulfilled and make money and watch Judging Amy reruns in the middle of the day while playing with Swaddlini all at the same time, but it is not possible. Especially when the stupid dog decides to eat a bottle of Motrin and completely screw up your schedule while you force spoonfuls of hydrogen peroxide down his stupid throat and wait for him to puke but not on the rug and then he doesn't puke and the baby is in the crib crying but you can't do anything about it. Especially not then.

It's like Judge Amy Gray's stay-at-home friend said to her when Amy was conflicted about her status as a working mother: "Whatever you do, your kids end up hating you anyway. At least if you work, when they come to you asking for money, you have some to give."

I miss my baby. But I'm back.