We can't be friends anymore

July 21st, 2008

My very best friend from college, Kay, had her first baby just three months before I delivered my third. This was both good and bad. It was good because now we have children the same age. It was not-so-good because at the time I desperately wanted to be with her after the delivery, and it just wasn’t the best time for me to travel. We are no where near each other. Besides the pregnancy, my eldest was not-quite-four and my middle child was still just 18 months old. I don’t have local family to help out. It wouldn’t work.

We don’t talk nearly as often as either one of us would like. (I think if she reads this, she will agree with that.) It is very difficult to keep in touch. I’m not sure why some people are able to do it so well. I’m horrible at it. I try. This blog is one attempt at it.

A few months ago we were talking, trying to catch up, forgiving ourselves for never being quite there, when she said it.

“We can’t be friends anymore.”

“Really?”

“No, we just can’t,” she said.

“Oh, um, why?” I wasn’t quite sure what to say. Her tone was quite flat on the phone.

“I read about it in the paper. Moms who work are never friends with stay-at-home moms and vice versa. I’m going back to work.”

“Oh, is that all? I’m a mother. I don’t have time to read the paper.”

We both laughed.

We talk now and then, but there is never a moment when we both have time. She called me today. We were talking about lots of different threads of conversation, and then about our experiences with our first children, when they were very little.

“Oh yes,” I said “I vaguely remember that. It is a blur, but I recall after I finished nursing finding candy bar wrappers behind my nursing chair. I was just so hungry and there was never time to eat.” (I’m not the type to eat candy bars, I had found them in my husband’s bag he had taken with him to the hospital – in case he got hungry when I delivered.)

She laughed, “Oh, you do have to blog about THAT.”