Who Needs Friends When You Have Kids?

I've written before about how difficult it can be to make new friends once you become an adult, and how it's even harder for stay-at-home moms.

It's now two years after that initial friendship post and unfortunately, not much has changed on the friend front. In fact, things are even worse. While I've made exactly ZERO new real friends in the past two years, at least two of my mommy friends have moved away...to a different school district, maybe, or a different county, a different state.

Luckily, my kids are now two years older and therefore much better conversationalists. They are my new(ish) friends! And if I want adult conversation, I have my DH to turn to. Pathetic? (Well, honestly, they are way more fun than most of the people around here anyway.)

My husband encourages me to be friendlier and more outgoing. He does this because he knows I wouldn't mind having more friends. He wants me to be happy.

But it's not as if I can change my whole personality. Right? I mean, people don't actually manage to toss off their introverted tendencies and become outgoing types with suddenly packed social calendars, do they?

And it's not like I'm horribly lonely or wallowing in self-pity: I love my life, I'm happy. I don't think about my lack of friends on a daily basis.

Probably because I actually do have lots and lots of friends. Tons! They just aren't local. They are pals from childhood, high school, college, my 20's. They live in Chicago, Seattle, England, Israel, Australia, and so on and so forth. They are scattered around the world--pretty much everywhere except within 30 miles of my house.

I rarely (never?) see my far-flung friends. We don't speak on the phone. Hell, we don't even email anymore. It's come down to the occasional Facebook comment or message.

With some of my "friends," if you break down our communication over the past few decades years, it boils down to the equivalent of "LOL" or " :-) ."

My friendships have been reduced to emoticons and acronyms.

These are the people I used to spend HOURS talking to--either on the phone when we were teens, in our dorm during college, or over coffee (or beers) in the city during our single days.

Yeah, it's sorta sad. But it's also life. I'm pretty much okay with it.

People move on. Priorities change. It's not just about us anymore. No one has time for hours-long conversations anymore.

And discussing ad nauseum the strengths and weaknesses of your and your friends' children will JUST NEVER EVER be as exciting as dissecting what it could have possibly meant when Johnny looked at you in 10th-grade social studies class. Sigh.

What to do?

For now I'll just bitch about it in my blog.

Turtleneck Man, Dalmatian Man, Arm Man...Oh, My!

During college--especially freshman year when we hadn't met many people yet--my new dorm friends and I did that thing where we gave people we continually saw around campus but didn't know nicknames. I remember doing this mostly with hot upper-classmen guys. We had no idea who they were (yet!) but we talked about them so much that we needed identifiers. Let's see, there was Turtleneck Man (my crush--he was very JCrew), Dalmatian Man (my roommate's crush--hippie dude who walked his dalmatian around campus), and Arm Man (lovely, muscley arms, duh), just to name a few.

We later discovered their real names: John, Glenn, and Steve. The nicknames were much more fun. There was a thrilling sense of mystery--who were these guys and what might the future hold?--that you just don't get with a John, Glenn, or Steve.

There were a few girls/women we named, too. We poured over the freshman Facebook (a book with photos of all incoming freshman--yeah, The Facebook was a cool college thing before Zuckerberg and the Internet turned it into a needy housewife thing) and even though names were included with the photos, the wise-asses on our dorm floor sometimes gave nicknames to the odd ducks. The one I remember best was Ugly Susan. I think her name was Eunice in real life and, as I recall, she was quite dorky-looking, and we resembled each other not at all. But one of the guys saw something there, so.... (I was just happy she was Ugly Susan instead of Pretty Susan).

After college, I moved to NYC, and there was no longer any need for these nicknames. There are just too many people in Manhattan--you don't tend to repeatedly run into the same people unless you already know them. Sure, there's Deli-Worker Guy and Creepy Dude from Downstairs; but because these people aren't terribly interesting, you don't talk about them much and therefore only need basic identifiers, rather than cute nicknames.

Abs of Steel has two young kids,
so her abs are extra-impressive!

But once my husband and I moved to the suburbs, nicknames became necessary again. We began to see the same strangers over and over again around town. We needed a quick way to identify these folks: That Blonde Mom With The Two Girls Who We See At The Pool just wasn't cutting it.

What Sven looks like

My husband, who has a seriously awesome way with words, is usually the nicknamer. Pretty soon we were talking about Abs of Steel (a super-fit, bikini-wearing mom we'd see at the pool), Sven (a Nordic-looking, convertible-Beemer-driving dad with long blonde hair), and Robert Plant (who's nickname really should be Schlubby Robert Plant, because I only wish we had a dude who looked like RP in town). It made conversations much easier.

NOT, unfortunately, what our
Robert Plant looks like (except
maybe the hair)

But unlike at college where we didn't usually end up becoming friendly with those hot upperclassmen or nerdy freshman we nicknamed, once you've lived in a small town for five or six years, you tend to start meeting people.

Yup, we now officially know Abs of Steel. And Sven, too. AWK-WARD!

Nice folks, though.

Preschool Mean Girls...Who Knew?

The girls at my daughter's school can be brutal. They are so competitive; all they talk about is who is "best friends" with whom on a given day. They don't mean to be hurtful but they are. The scary part is they're only three.

"How was school today?" I ask. "Who'd you play with?"

"Abigail," she answers. "But Mommy, Abigail was best friends with Elizabeth today."

What does that even mean? Does it mean my poor baby was left out of that day's best-friend clique? Does it mean she was playing with Abigail only to be informed by Elizabeth that she was Abigail's best friend that day, not my daughter?

I don't know, exactly, because it's really difficult to get the straight dope from a three year old.

My daughter isn't just a victim, however, as I found out while dropping her off at school one day. We had just walked in the door when Abigail ran over. "Yay, you're here! You're my best friend," she announced.

Without missing a beat, my daughter coldly replied, "You're NOT my best friend. Elizabeth is my best friend."

My jaw hit the floor. Whaaaaat? I had never heard this kind of talk coming from my daughter's mouth before. Luckily, Abigail's dad had already left, so I only had to feel mortified in front of the teacher.

I'm sure this kind of behavior is normal in the preschool set these days (at least with girls--my son has never ever talked like this). But according to my daughter's teacher, this particular group of girls is one of the most competitive and best-friend-obsessed she's ever experienced.

Apparently, there are a couple of aggressive Alpha girls in the class (my daughter isn't one of them) who stir things up and stoke the fires. The ring leader is a precocious cutie who always wants to be the "best girl" at everything (and who also happens to have an older sister--which surely isn't a coincidence).

The teacher told me that, when things get too hairy, my daughter is good about removing herself from the fray and going off to read a book by herself--which I was really happy to hear. "But she's listening! She doesn't miss a word of what's going on," the teacher added. Oh, no doubt.

Sure, it's important that my daughter learn to deal with all sorts of social interactions--not just warm & fuzzy ones--but it still worries me. She is a strong, opinionated little girl, but when it comes to her peers, she seems more of a follower. My son has never been fresh or bratty just because his friends were acting that way, but my daughter is a mimic who will do anything to get a laugh.

Hopefully none of this bad behavior will sink into that little brain of hers and take hold. Hopefully next year's class will have a different dynamic (though I'm not holding my breath since many of the same kids will be in her class). Or maybe the kids will do some growing up over the summer, leave this pettiness behind, and begin the new school year with nothing but love and acceptance for all.

Yeah...maybe.

Good Friends Are Like Stars...

...you don't always see them, but you know they are always there. -- Confucius

We went up to Massachusetts to spend Thanksgiving with my family this year. While there, I decided to help my parents by clearing out some of my old junk--stuff that's been cluttering up their space for the twenty years that they've lived in the house. The two nightstand drawers in my old room were crammed with letters from the late eighties and early nineties--these were my college years when I would go back home over school breaks and summer vacations.

I've been going through the letters slowly, trying to decipher my friends' almost-illegible scrawl. My goal was to throw out most of the letters, but yet keep a representative sample that would sum up the place and time, as well as each friend's individual personality.

A large proportion of the letters were from my freshman year at college. I guess this is because my old high school friends and I had yet to form any close friendships with kids at college, so we were, understandably, clinging to our former lives. 

Summer of '88: Me and a few friends, back together
 after our freshman year of college.

As I read through the letters, I wasn't surprised by all the mentions of cute boys, classes, partying, and roommates (whom ranged from awesome to awful). But what did surprise me, what I wasn't expecting to read, was so much written about our friendships with one another--what we missed, what we meant to each other, how close our bonds were, etc. We were surprisingly introspective young women considering we were just out of high school. 

For example, here's what one friend wrote to me in September, 1987, just after we'd gone our separate ways to different colleges thousands of miles apart:

"My problem is I meet a lot of people but have no close friends. I wish in a way you and our other friends were with me. Though we'd all be trying to break away from each other, we'd still have each other there.... I miss you, Sue! I talk about you a lot. It's so weird to be starting new again! I like it, but there are certain security things I miss, like our group."

That is pretty self-aware for an eighteen year old, if you ask me. 

In another letter, a different friend wrote:

"Sue, I really miss you and I know it sounds dumb but I really wish that you were here because you truly have been so strong for me on so many occasions. You are truly my best friend (a term I no longer use so lightly!) and I don't know how come I deserve you sometimes."

I love you, crazy girls.

Twenty years later, I'm blown away by the level of intimacy in these letters. I'm sure at the time I didn't think much of it; it would've just been how things were, how we felt about one another, and the way we communicated and responded to each other. But because I'm so far away from that time, and my focus is on family rather than friendships, it just seems so, so remarkable that we felt that strongly and deeply about each other.

I still love these ladies, though we remain geographically isolated from one another. I miss having them in my life on a regular basis, but even more, I miss having a gang of cool, smart, interesting, and fun women around to whom I can talk, vent, and bitch, and who also completely have my back. My husband and family are wonderful and supportive of course, but it's not the same.  

So if any of you lovely ladies--my dearest friends from childhood and beyond--are reading this, I just want to thank you for all the love, laughs, hugs, support, and advice you've given me over the years.

I couldn't have made it through without you. And I miss you so much it hurts.

Just Call Me Kindergarten Cop

There is a girl in my son's Kindergarten class with whom he's become fast friends.

My husband and son ran into This Girl (I'll refer to her as "T.G." from now on) a few weeks ago, and she went on and on about how she wanted my son to come over her house for a playdate.

I had met T.G.'s mother only once before--at back-to-school-night--and, let's put it this way, she's not exactly the long-lost best friend I've been hoping to find. My first impression was that she was a little brash. I'm sure she's a perfectly decent person, but her scratchy smoker's voice and aloof manner turned me off.

However, my lovely boy wanted a playdate with his new friend, so I wasn't about to say no just because the mom was not my cup o' tea. Of course I had to give her the benefit of the doubt.

I knew T.G.'s last name so I tracked them down through whitepages.com (and felt pretty stalker-ish doing so), called, and her mom and I set something up for three days hence.

Kindergarten Halloween party

The day of the playdate, just as we were about to leave for their house, I noticed our machine was blinking; it was a message from elementary school. T.G.'s mom didn't have our number so she had the school call to cancel the playdate. No explanation, no apology, no nothin'.

Oh, how my sweet boy cried and cried! All I could do was hug him and tell him I was so, so sorry over and over again as his little body shook with giant sobs. The anger flooded my body--how I hated T.G.'s mother at that moment!

If I could've given my son a decent explanation--"Honey, T.G.'s little sister swallowed poison and was rushed to the emergency room"--I think it would've been easier for both of us to accept. But instead, we were left in the lurch.

The next time I saw her, at a class event, I avoided her because I didn't trust myself to make nice-nice after what had happened. And a Kindergarten classroom isn't exactly the ideal place for a confrontation.

It's been a month now, and she hasn't called to apologize or reschedule the playdate.

So everyday I grit my teeth while listening to my son go on and on about all the fun he and T.G. had during recess, or about how funny she is, or blahblahblah. Oh, sure, he may have forgotten all about his first heartbreak, but his mother sure hasn't. Grrrrrrr! I can't help it, but hearing that girl's dumb name instantly turns me into one of Sarah Palin's Mama Grizzlies.

So, guess what, T.G. and T.G.'s mom? Mama Grizzly is watching. Do NOT hurt my cub again if you know what's good for you. I will attack...and that's a promise.

Will You Be My Friend?

I've lived in the 'burbs for four years now. I'm getting the hang of it, finally...but making friends can still be challenging. I have friends, I do. But when you add kids to the equation, friendships have a tendency ebb and flow. For example, when my son was in class and best friends with this one boy, his mother and I saw a lot of each other, but now that the boys aren't in the same class, I haven't seen her in three months. Stuff like that.

So this new year finds me down a friend or two. I could use some backups. But nothing is more nerve-wracking than trying to chat up another chick. (It's worse than hitting on a dude--men are easy.) It makes me feel like an insecure tween all over again, trying to become friends with the popular girl in school. Shouldn't this get easier with age?

That's where the local kids' gym comes in. It's not in our town (there's nothing in our town), it's in the next one over, where we spend most of our time. The town has cool, quirky stores, an artsy movie house, and our kids go to preschool there. It fits us so well that I'm toying with the idea of moving there. I'll call it Priusville (what my husband calls it).

There's a group of moms I see at this kids' gym; they all live in Priusville and seem to know each other from before. My son is buddies with one of the women's son, so we've been to each other's houses for playdates. We're friendly though not quite friends yet. But at the kids' gym, she's got this whole other group. When I see them, I try to participate in their conversation but since much of what they talk about is Priusville-related, I often feel left out.

So I'll find myself standing there, trying to think of witty and relevant things to say, starting to sweat. After ten minutes, I can't hack it anymore. I'm stressed. So I go sit on a nearby bench, open my New Yorker, and pretend to read. I keep an ear on their conversation and whenever possible, chime in with a comment or two. One of the women was reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, and since I've read the first two Stieg Larsson books, I chatted her up about it. No sooner had we started discussing the book, when my daughter began moaning that she needed help climbing the gym apparatus. I had to run off...conversation over.

I give myself pep talks about smiling more and being outgoing. Sometimes it works and I'm bubbly and engaging (which can be exhausting). Other days, I feel lazy and decide that a quick "Hello" will have to do. I hope the other moms understand and don't think I'm a bitch. 'Cuz then I'll never make new friends.

Seventh Heaven? More Like Hell

There's an interesting review in today's The New York Times Book Review. The book is Bound, and it's by Antonya Nelson. I've never read anything by Ms. Nelson but it sounds like she's on my wavelength.

The reviewer writes about the novel's protagonist: "Although she's in her early 40s and long married, Catherine still feels 'nagged by teenage unease' when she looks in a mirror." She goes on to compare Catherine to another character in a previous work by Ms. Nelson. Like this other character who thinks, "Now that he's become one it surprised McBride how few adults were grown-ups," Catherine feels stuck in seventh grade.

I can totally relate. Whenever I feel insecure and self-conscious, seventh grade is always the year I'm transported back to. I was never so awkward and hopelessly uncool as I was that year. In sixth grade, I didn't yet care that I wasn't popular, and by the time high school rolled around, I'd begun the process of coming into my own and finding an acceptable place in the social hierarchy. I would never achieve uber-popularity (and oh, I craved it) but I wasn't a dork either.

In seventh and eighth grade, however, I was afraid I'd be invisible and unpopular forever. Sure, I had friends, but those friends were just as uncool as I was. They didn't exactly drag me down; rather our little group was mired in social mediocrity. We were outsiders, only ever hearing about the parties, romances, and adventures of the popular set, but never able to participate.

So, yes, when I was living in the city after my first child was born, not working, alone all day with the baby, no mommy friends close by, I would enviously watch other mothers hanging out together at the playground and feel twelve again. So insecure. I'd eavesdrop on their conversations about feedings, play groups, and sleep, and wish they were my friends.

It happened again when we moved to the suburbs. I had no friends or family nearby (neither did my husband) and my child was still too young for school. Each and every day we had nowhere to go, no one to see, nothing to do. I'd take the baby for walks around the neighborhood in the lovely autumn afternoons and say shy hellos to all the moms waiting for the school bus to come and deliver their children home. They'd be talking and laughing, so engrossed in their parents-of-school-age-kids-world that they hardly even noticed the new mom pushing her baby around in the stroller day after day, sneaking furtive looks their way, hoping to make a friend. Again, I was back in seventh grade, overhearing kids raving about the most popular boy in school's Bar Mitzvah and so desperately wishing I'd been invited.

I've found my place here now, and have made some wonderful new friends. Luckily, times when I feel self-conscious and insecure are fewer and farther between. But I know that the next time it happens, I'll be twelve once again.