Free The Break-Up Diet: A Memoir by Annette Fix Page A

it wrong. Maybe we were the weird ones.
    Josh grabbed his baseball sports bag and his skateboard from the trunk. We walked up the grassy hill toward the covered picnic tables. A group of mothers sat on the benches and many small children played nearby. A group of older kids stood gathered around another table and took turns writing on a large scroll of butcher paper.
    When we reached the crest, the entire group stopped and watched us approach.
    “They're all looking at us,” Josh said, barely moving his lips.
    “Just smile and give them a chance.” I stretched a grin across my face. “Hi,” I waved to the group. “Which one of you is Glory?”
    Glory, a plump Hispanic mother with a shock of dark curls, shook my hand and pointed around the picnic area, naming the members. During the dizzying introduction, I counted fourteen moms and thirty-one kids. Only five looked to be in Josh's age group, the majority ranged from toddlers through elementary school.
    Glory explained to Josh that the older kids were working on writing a perpetual story—each child adding the next scene to something the child before had written.
    Josh tilted his head and looked at me. His expression couldn't have been more telling of his thoughts. The look he gave me screamed: You've got to be kidding. See! I told you they'd be weird.
    Despite his reluctance, I was proud of his display of manners. He smiled at Glory, set his bag and skateboard at my feet, and wandered over to join the juvenile storytellers.
    Once Josh was settled watching the narrative project unfold, the group's attention turned to me.
    “Are you a stay-at-home mom?”
    “What does your husband do?”
    “Where do you live?”
    “How long have you been homeschooling?”
    I didn't realize I had to interview to join a homeschool playgroup. I knew my situation was far from the norm. I felt uncomfortable being asked to hold it up to scrutiny by so many people at once.
    “Well, I'm a single mom. We live in Aliso Viejo, and I just started homeschooling Josh.”
    I felt like a life-sized Show-and-Tell project. The questions just kept coming.
    “What does your ex-husband think of you homeschooling?” asked a petite Asian woman holding an infant.
    There it was. The same basic question that always came up one way or another. In Josh's early years, I answered in vague platitudes about accidentally putting the cart before the horse. After thirteen years, I just served up the answer without decoration.
    “I was never married. Josh's father left when I was five months pregnant and I haven't seen him since.”
    There was a soft collective “Oh.” just like the sound made when a crowd witnesses a circus performer fall off her horse.
    I waved it off. “But that was a long time ago. So it really doesn't matter, and I certainly don't need to worry about what he thinks.”
    One mother, Tammy, raised her hand to ask the next question. She had a warm smile and looked like the cliché of granola crunchy, all the way from her Birkenstocks to the thick braid of hair that hung like a rope down to the seat of her pants. “So, what do you do for a living?”
    Out of the relationship frying pan and into the employment fire.
    “I'm a writer.” I shrugged slightly. “And I work part time in a bar.”
    I didn't want to admit that it also happened to be a topless gentleman's club. I detested having to mention the bar job at all. It always led to that unspoken assumption that I was only a writer wannabe. But the only way you could confidently say you were a writer was if you could provide an ISBN or production credits to back up your claim.
    Everyone, everywhere, seemed to be writing a book or a screenplay. I cringed whenever I mentioned writing a book and a person's response was, “You are? Me too.” Invariably, their next comment was “I think we should get together and collaborate on a project. You can help me write it, you see, I have this idea…”
    “You should talk to Karen.”
    I missed