I spent some time today with an old friend whom I haven’t seen in quite awhile. She lost a baby immediately after I became pregnant, and she couldn’t stand to be around me or my son for over a year. Not that it didn’t hurt me, but I don’t blame her for that response. Grief is a terrible and personal thing, and although I would have drowned mine in gallons of beer she handled it in her own way and if I was to keep her I had to respect that.

Anyway, today was a good break from the often lonely life of a white, middle-class stay-at-home mom. I specify white because in my experience, it’s true. The friend I met today, for instance, is African (like, actually emigrated from East Africa), and she has a HUGE support network. The Filipinas I went to nursing school with all had big families where cousins were like siblings. Not that anyone is immune to stay at home loneliness, but I think stereotypical white suburban moms (or military spouses, etc.) do it to themselves the worst.

Anyway squared, once you have children it seems many of your friends just vanish. Friends stopping by with lasagna just to hang out seems to be just a beautiful urban fairy tale. I miss the people I used to spend hours with carousing at bars, making an absolute fool of myself but still getting calls to do it again next week. A tip for whittling down your wedding guest list is to exclude those whom you have not spoken to in a year. What about friends who have visited once, or worse, never, during your child’s life? Are they gone forever… Off the list, as it were? They are continuing with their lives, chronicling their drunken hijinks on Facebook so the world- and especially you- can see how happy and free they are. Not that you can blame them! They didn’t decide to procreate, they have better things to do than microwave Enfamil and read “But Not The Hippopotamus” 14 times an hour. Let them go! You are dead, a zombie in the land of dada. Let them live their lives without counterattacking with 167 pictures a day proving how much you adore your new life.

Easier said than done. I often think about what it would be like to go to a restaurant again, or even the fucking grocery store, without having to plan out the excursion and minimize all points of potential tears. Stuff to do? Check. Stuff to crap in. Check. Stuff to protect him from surfaces others have crapped on? Triple check. This is now my life, and yet, most days, I really am happy. I read a study detailing that most new parents are extremely unhappy (based on the survey responses of 900 working women, maybe I’ll link to it another day), but to them I say, “Fuck that.” There are moments of incredible bliss when you look at this tiny human you created but really deserve little credit for, and they say, “dadadadadadadada.” It means nothing, but then again, it means everything.

Someday your old friends will cross your path again. Maybe when they have their own children, maybe more than every once in awhile… those days are great breaks, and I love them. Until and in between then, I am striving to make new friends. Mom friends. It won’t be easy because underneath it all I’m still that same drunken fool (metaphorically, obviously, most days), but maybe someone will like me enough to come over with some lasagna and just hang out for a little while. I’d like that.