I’ve had Mom Friends for a while. I don’t mean like my junior high school teacher whom I still talk to and who is 82 or 1,000 or something, but the Mom Friends my age. It’s slightly freaky when your pals start reproducing. It’s a sign of what–adulthood? Yet another hallmark that seems to happen so easily in the movies but in real life seems unacceptable or unbelieveable or just I don’t know, not what you think it would be. Friendships change. I don’t know what it’s like from the Mom Friend perspective (and I suppose I will some day) but from the perspective of the friend-with-inactive-womb, it’s a shift that sometimes puts a bump or a permanent stop to the friendship.
Keeping up with Mom Friends requires you traveling to them (understandable) and spending the much of the time fretting over the baby rather than talking to each other (also understandable). Having a baby is consuming stuff, and kids require a LOT of attention. And they’re so tiny. (Oh god, what if you drop one.) That part doesn’t bug me. I get that part. (I actually am a fan of kids — some of them. With some, there’s an insta-bond; others seem like blank-faced pigs in a blanket.) But sometimes there’s a faint whiff of “Some day you’ll understand” from your Mom Friend. She has advanced beyond your realm and is only able to fully connect to other Mom Friends, and sometimes, that makes me sad. It’s sort of like the pals you lose when they fall in love. When single, they’re reliable and like steel-rod-loyal, but once coupled, they disappear like, I don’t know, alka seltzer dissolving in water (i’m really low on similes right now. sorry). Or it’d be like if all your friends move to Philly and started talking about cheese steaks all the time. What would you do then? Mom Friends like other Mom Friends because they have much in common. Like one of my Mom Friends, who is still quite dear to me, is a Mom to two kids and sees ghosts in her house. And now, she’s completely enamored with another Mom Friend who happens to be a Psychic and can cleanse her house of spirits as well as discuss the merits of Timeouts. How do you beat that, people?
It’s a long life (knock on wood). People come and go, and sometimes come back again. I mean, we all kind of take turns leaving each other, right? I’m just getting used to it and I’m not always so dang melancholy. Maybe I’ll just go give myself a timeout.