i see you girl
a couple of mini memoirs about mom friends, friends who also happen to be moms
Welcome again, girlies and boys and gays and theys! Per usual, you can listen to this memoir. It is nsfw or little ears. Subscribe in your private podcast feed to be notified when a new audio essay is published. I am not committing to doing audio for all memoirs, but as a consumer I like having the option and it’s fun so I’m trying. Plus in audio you will typically hear a little more behind-the-scenes of the story/ies, hear me feeling uncomfortable, and maybe even making additional secret jokes! Like, so cool!
mom friends, the worst.
First I need to make an opening statement about how I hate differentiating between friends and “mom friends,” and while I completely get the need for specificity in some contexts, it still annoys me. I don’t want to tackle that today but I needed to say it up front because what I’m sharing today IS about some friends of mine, who are neighbors, and moms.
This is a very specific type of friend, isn’t it? It’s context, location, and something all-encompassing that we all have in common. We are moms, and aside from the location of our houses, this is the main and number 1 thing we have in common that is the basis for the friendship. I am SURE we’d still be friends even if we were not all moms because they are all delightful gals (hey gfs!). I am simply over-explaining things because I have anxiety and also harbor petty annoyances and I must address both.
I wrote these mini memoirs on my phone, sitting on my porch probably, being eaten by mosquitos definitely, trying to be cool about my boys hitting each other for fun. Trying to exude friendliness to anyone who walks on by down the sidewalk, while also desperately not wanting to have conversations because conversations require my brain, and my brain hurts a lot between the hours of 5 and 8pm, ok? So anyway, these are old but still relevant, and timeless, honestly. It might have happened a while ago, but they are me, she is me, I am her, we are we, day to day, minute to minute, year by year. Raising these kids and keeping sanity nearby if not fully in residence.
a tuesday
Passed a neighbor - a friend that isn’t new but feels new, because we’ve barely spent any meaningful time together that hasn’t included children and babies in the now handful of years that we have known each other. I was walking my dog in an attempt to keep $4k worth of new sod from turning yellow immediately, and neighbor was heading away from home with her 4yo on a scooter. I yelled hi, her kid yelled hi back. I could see her smile - my friend’s smile - of silent greeting. “We’re going to the park!” Her daughter yells jubilantly. I yell to have fun, and she hollers back WE WILL! With a giant smile, and she’s off on her scooter in the other direction. My friend smiles again at me, matching my smile, and she raises her hand in a gesture that means she’d rather be doing anything but this. Our smiles said that, too - even from 3 houses down I could see it - before she even raised her hand. I knew what she was thinking, because it’s 7:04pm, and the sun is setting. My own house is already in the throes of bedtime routines, and I only have these minutes of semi-respite because our elder hound can’t go too long without going outside and she’s already peed twice in the house today and I simply cannot deal with cleaning up another being’s waste where it doesn’t belong. When I get back inside, I’ll be wrangling and herding and convincing and speaking softly and then maybe less softly and hoping and wringing my hands anxiously as I guide my own 4yo through each step of his bedtime routine which seems more complicated than your favorite influencer’s skincare routine.
And maybe one day, some day, potentially soon? I’ll have an actual conversation with this friend and neighbor. We will speak in full sentences without yelling down the street and/or over screaming kids. We’ll just have to see I guess.
a little too self-congratulatory
My street is what Lizzo might call hashtag blessed. On my block alone, there are 4 houses in a row, each with 2 or more children under 5. This is…insane. Awesome. Convenient. Extremely convenient! And this is just on this one half block! Go a tiny bit further in literally any direction and the number of kids under 7 doubles. In nice weather, when we are all outside constantly, watching all the kids, yelling about not running into the street. It’s like a mini block party.
Sometimes we get to have adult conversation, sometimes we say vague words that could potentially resemble a conversation but there there’s never more than 97 seconds of uninterrupted time to complete a sentence, much less a whole thought, let alone an entire conversation.
And yet! These ladies (dudes too, but just wait, we’ll get to them) (maybe) (jk who cares about them) are some of my closest friends at this juncture and this is for a very specific reason, aside from the fact that they are very nice girls. It’s bahcauze: I have had to ask for a) last minute babysitting, b) to borrow a car - also last minute, c) to use most of an entire bag of flour late at night after I ruined a batch of precious homemade playdoh (I don’t wanna talk about it), and d) is the problem me because now it’s looking like I need a lot of last minute things yikes, Sara.
And in a world where Millennials are people pleasing, afraid-to-commit, allergic-to-both-conflict-and-asking-for-help struggling humans, the simple fact that I felt comfortable enough to text the thread or one of them specifically and be like hi can I use an entire bag of flour immediately? Hi can I use your vehicle in 10 minutes to take my kid to school because we planned the day poorly? Hi my loving husband forgot he’s supposed to be fathering children and my nanny needs to go home but I won’t be home for 45 minutes, can someone keep my children from burning down my house? Hi it’s only 5:37pm is anyone else coming completely unglued with each loud second that ticks by? Hi we are all ill again and I need someone to remind me why we are doing this? Hi is the gd wine bar open down the street because Jeezus Harold Christ?
It feels almost revolutionary. Not to be dramatic. But when I think hard about it - which I don’t, because it’s become so comfortable for us to text random questions, requests, invites for kid play, favors, that it’s become normal. And it’s easy to get used to things that become normal, and not appreciate them fully, I guess. The context, the privilege, and the circumstances have majestically aligned to allow me to form a “mom friend group” (gag) that serves me so well, with a group of ladies who are not terrible humans and/or excessively annoying (hey girls, watch me shower you with compliments because anxiety demands I make sure I am extra clear that you are lovely and ohmigod maybe probably none of them even read this good grief).
But just, I need to acknowledge if only to myself: it’s fucking special ain’t it! Where are my GD tissues!
of a morning
I walked out the door this morning, the culmination of the usual pre-school / pre-work chaos of breakfast and tv and which show are we watching and who gets to choose the show today and at what point in the morning will it finally be *acceptable* to the 4-year-old to put on school clothes and does the baby have his pacifier and stuffed friend of choice and how hungry are they and is it not too hungry so as to allow me to lay in bed for another 8 minute episode of Bluey because I ended up being the one to choose the show to end a fight over Super Kitties versus Trash Truck.
Woof.
And then, we’re on to who didn’t want that for breakfast and this one wanted juice but not THAT juice followed by a crisis over the Darth Vader socks being dirty and another crisis over needing a jacket with a hood and where is the jacket with the hood and if anyone put the jackets where they belong this would never be a crisis at all and it’s useless for me to point that out yet I obviously do and does the toddler need lunch packed and where have all the water bottles walked off to and after ALL OF THAT. After ALL of that, we have lived an entire lifetime in the 42 minutes since we started that first episode of Bluey.
And then we walk out the door, and the next round of warfare commences on a battlefield that now includes rain and/or morning mosquito swarms and/or unbearable humidity and/or a cold wind to whine about: walking the 6 yards to the car, deciding who will open the door, getting in the car, convincing the 4yo that sticks don’t go in the car and there are in fact plenty of sticks at school he can play with, then putting on the seatbelt, fixing the seatbelt because seatbelts are not supposed to wrap around your neck like that, jeezus H.
So ANYWAY back to this morning, on the way to the car (mid-warfare, if you’re still with me), a neighbor is walking her own toddler down the sidewalk to our house, at which we have nanny share this week. We greet each other, commenting [quickly, obviously, we both want to chit chat but also we got shit ta DO] about how the previous evening went. She mentioned that SOMEONE aka her kid was up until almost midnight, and I commiserate, speaking aloud some kind of generic yet empathetic and validating (I hope, at least) words to let her know in the briefest way possible that I have been there, it’s not just her, she’s not doing anything wrong, there’s nothing wrong with her kid, it won’t last forever, she is the perfect mother for her child, ETCETERA. It’s all of that, but make it only a couple words, at 8:32 in the morning, pre-coffee, pre-breakfast, pre-shower for both of us, too, I bet.
As I turn the corner to get in my car and she turns the corner to take her kid inside, we make eye contact one last time and share A Look. It’s one you know well, especially if you have also mothered small beings. It’s quick, silent, but like Timothée Chalamet’s body language with what’s-her-name-Jenner, it is speaking a thousand words and telling the entire story of motherhood in a single second.
And I know she agrees with this assessment, because we both let out what literature (pronounced “lit-tra-chur”) would call a wry chuckle, another Known Look, but make it a sound. A sound that means this sucks, this is the life, I can’t wait to get this part of my day over with, I can’t wait to do all of this again tomorrow, I can’t wait to see him at the end of the day and find out if he was a shitty little shit to the other children or if he drew a precious picture of me and him because I’m his favorite. We can’t wait, sarcastically AND for real life (per Bluey, iykyk). We can’t wait! To be alone, to be with them, to have another, to send them to school, to find a GD babysitter, to not trip over small toys, to celebrate their birthday, to watch them discover pill bugs on the sidewalk, to draw a house for the pill bug, and do you think the pill bug would like a house? And should it be blue chalk or green chalk? What do pill bugs like to eat? Do pill bugs eat humans? What eats humans?
When I had Charlie and was drowning in postpartum anxiety, digging myself a tiny hovel of despair - not a cute Hobbit hovel either, definitely more of a tiny dank mud pit - no room for anyone but me in there. I always thought to myself…how can I possibly find other people who will like me? Who are like me? Like me enough to get me, like me enough to be my friend, to help me with my kid, allow their kid to play with my kid, answer my texts when it’s now 5:48pm and how has it only been 11 minutes since that last text, please tell me you are also desperate for bedtime! What if I can’t find these people? What if I’m too snarky? What if no one likes my jokes? What if no one gets my jokes and thinks I’m a giant unloving bitch who shouldn’t have had children? What if my irreverence is like, too irreverent to connect with anyone? What if I’m the only one who doesn’t love motherhood?
Friendship of any category - mom or otherwise - is a road, not a destination. Ick at that metaphor, but I guess it fits. I found a group who, at least on the surface and to my face, like me (so like, lol, I think some of them might read this and now I’m nervous to proclaim that they like me because what if it’s all a lie and I’m the weirdo no one likes!!!!) (Anxiety is truly remarkable, no?)
I would not have found this if I stayed in my hovel of despair. I had to try, a little. A lot. I had to work on myself a little bit, little by little, so I could go outside, in whatever body I inhabit, with my face “undone” (can you imagine, showing one’s face as it comes!?), my hair messy, my sweatpants dirty, and show my kid how to make friends. “Hi, I’m Sara, you look nice or at least like, not a *visible* monster, and you have a kid the same size as mine. Can we play with you? Adult convo is optional but welcome, despite my resting bitch face, I swear.”
This is not me giving advice, because there isn’t a one-size-fits-all plan to build community. It’s like YouTube influencers who are like, hey be like me, I can teach you how to make 6 figs in a month on YouTube! And the first step of the plan is to have a large following on another platform. Dumb and not helpful.
As you can clearly, maybe, feel and see through how many times I’ve hedged, I’ve not “made it.” I’m not at the top or the end. Because it’s a thing that keeps growing + morphing, and requires me to give - milk, time, dino chicken nuggets, compassion, hand-me-downs, expensive tubs of blueberries we all insist upon buying the day before the kids decide they don’t like blueberries anymore; and to take - cars, baking goods, empathy, a travel stroller, contact info for your psychiatrist, the bag of fruit my kids won’t eat but yours are currently obsessed with but better act fast before they change their minds.
And if no one moves away, maybe we’ll all be sitting in the street in 10 years, wondering if our teenagers are out in a place they shouldn’t be, doing things we definitely did but don’t really want them to do. But we’ll know they’re together and watching out for each other, because they watched US be together + watch out for each other their whole lives.
I’m not crying, you’re crying.
k byeeeee going to sob nowwwwww
If you have some ladies in your life who lift you up, let you borrow literally anything they own, are always first to respond with “me too, girl” in the group text, you should def text them to say hey ily girl and also send this to them and/or give a shout out in the comments. A thing we don’t do enough: say aloud what our people mean to us. Tell them! It’ll bring you one step closer to borrowing your neighbors Tesla and getting an invite to the pool / boat / mountain house / award winning wine cellar / therapy appointment. I’m truly just looking out for you, ok?