When I had my first child in 2010, I started a mom and baby yoga class on the Upper West Side of New York City. Every woman in the class, including me, was nervous and exhausted, and any real attempt at connection was drowned out by the screams of fussy newborns. Still, we try to bond over the terrors and joys of caring for a cute newborn baby. If we spoke without having to breastfeed or take a crying baby outside during our meeting at Le Pain Quotidian, it would be considered a success. But when my son turned 1, our tight-knit group split up, some moving out of town, others no longer needing a shoulder to cry on. I never spoke to those women again.
I thought it was like that mom friends would be: You would meet fantastic women in a given time. You would exchange childish tricks, compare notes about sleep schedules or weaning the babies from whatever they needed to be weaned from, and when the relationship was over, you would move on. It would be a series of friends centered on convenience rather than true connection. After all, they were mom friends! A joke in an SNL skit, women drinking wine and sharing their woes in mom jeans. Women you went to when your child was potty training or throwing a tantrum. They weren’t the friends you’d call when you were fighting with your sister or dealing with a sexist co-worker.
Mom’s friends didn’t count. Well, not in the same way that your closest college friends did.
Then my son, Harper, started kindergarten and I found myself in a world of working, stay-at-home moms; No matter how far we have come in redefining gender roles, schooling remains entirely mother-centered. The advantage: it made it easier to contact new mothers. Every day, at school drop-off and pick-up, I talked to the same women. We started planning lunch dates. We would join a fitness class if we were working from home. As we brainstormed lunchbox ideas on the playground after school, we swapped our favorite lip gloss colors or places to get a good pedicure.
The years passed.
In February, my son, Harper, turned 14, and the other day I realized that I was trapped in several of these “mother friends” for almost a decade. In various combinations as women, we celebrate birthdays and plan trips together. We formed a book club, toasted the New Year with our husbands, and mingled at cocktail parties. We complained about our partners and sometimes each other, and we shared our frustrations about the unfair burden we carry in our families.
And yes, we talk about our children too. Quite.
But in our desire to have a stronger bond with our children, we also created a stronger bond with each other, and that’s what surprised me the most. These women I once considered mothers friends are now my closest friends. These are women who happen to be mothers and friends of mine, not singularly defined by the derogatory term “mother friend.” While shared circumstances may have brought us together, that’s not what keeps us friends today. It is time that unites us like a book. This is what I got wrong from the start about friends I met while chasing little kids in the park; they felt less important than their childhood friends simply because there was less history between us. Over the years, this story has developed naturally and now there is glue holding this new group of friends together as well.
With my son starting high school next year, the conversations have changed in my group of friends. Talk about high school and college and the perils of being a teenager with the whole world at your fingertips, thanks to the iPhone. Another conversation is also emerging: Where will my friends and I be in the next few years? There is a feeling that, after many years of close friendship, we may all scatter once again when our children leave and graduate from college. Some of us may stay in our community, some may not, and once again, we will be trying to figure out who we will stay in touch with.
Recently, four of us sat on my couch after a book club meeting and expressed how grateful we were for each other despite the uncertainty of the future. We decided we all needed to focus on the here and now; We still lived in the same city, so why focus on things we couldn’t change?
A silence fell over the room. Each of us registering the weight of lost friendships in life-changing plans. Then someone changed the subject, offering information about a new meditation class in town.
If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing about making friends, it would be this: Don’t take those first mom friends for granted. Yes, you will go through a lot of women before you find the real ones. But when you meet a special friend, wait. Give the relationship time. Intimate friendships are not made overnight.
This article was originally published in TODAY.com
