Mothers Day: To My Friends Without Kids
(an oldie but goodie, 2014)
I wrote this in 2014, missing old friends and an old life. There are going to be a ton of Substacks today extolling the joys of motherhood, and don’t get me wrong, it’s great, I adore my son, but today, this is for …
To My Friends Without Kids,
I was thinking about you tonight during the hour it took to put my son to bed. An hour that involved kicking and screaming – literally – and audiobooks and extra glasses of water and back rubs and relaxation techniques and a truckload of faith to get by, which is a reference to Lou Reed.
I don’t subscribe to the cult of motherhood. I never have. I don’t think I’m special because I had kids, and I don’t need to venerate mothers. I didn’t know I wanted a child of my own until roughly the year after my own mom died. But when I met Gordon, I was ready for something real. And motherhood felt like it might be part of that realness for me.
First, there was the work friend who urged me to freeze my eggs, then the writer friend who suggested my predilection for dating narcissistic boy-men might be put to use by just having a kid. And of course there was wise Jess who said, “Shut up. You’re totally having kids.. I can’t even talk to you right now.” And Rebecca Walker’s book Baby Love, which rocked my world in so many ways. But really, it was a process. A culmination of questions and answers that led me to the where I am now. And I’m very, very grateful. Although I wasn’t quite prepared for how profoundly it would change me.
I didn’t intend to lose you along the way.
But somehow, lose you I did. We don’t see each other very often. Not as much as I want. Mostly we say it’s no one’s fault. Although sometimes you say it is mine. I miss dinner parties (or, let’s be real, you have stopped inviting me). I miss openings. I miss readings. I miss all-day spectacular parties in the park or on your rooftops or wherever it is people have those parties these days. I am home every evening with Ben, unless I am working, or being paid to be elsewhere.
My partner and I are both writers, both self-employed, neither has figured out how to land that elusive thing called A Regular Paycheck. We have roughly 6 hours a day to get anything done – that includes, teaching, writing, consulting, doctor and dentist appointments (and therapy), exercise, school meetings, creative work like readings or rehearsals -- and dates with friends. Occasionally we’ll take turns going out at night. But we’re tired. I am no longer available in the way I was before 2010. And it breaks my heart. Right now, my life is an ever-evolving combination of work and motherhood with an occasional date night thrown in.
I miss my friends.
A friend without kids once said that in her late 30’s, all her friends were swallowed up by motherhood and disappeared. But roughly 15 years later when their kids were more self-sufficient, these friends came back. And she loved them still. I look forward to coming back.
Don’t forget me. Don’t give up on me. Don’t think it’s because I don’t care, or care less. Please try to be patient. Because one day, I really really hope we’re all back together, comparing notes and telling stories, about all the years in which I was tired and cranky and overworked and very possibly missing.
Happy Mothers Day and much love.
Brooke
When I told a close friend that I was pregnant, she got so upset. She said that she'd had a very close friend who had completely dropped her when she had a baby. And so I told my friend that I wouldn't drop her, but that she couldn't expect that I'd be able to be the same as I was before. We agreed to keep the friendship alive... and it still is. Our kids called her "aunt" and she got involved in their lives as well.
What I took away from this is a universal truth: every relationship takes two people. Often neither one is at fault for the death of a relationship, but almost always, it happens because of things that both sides do. I suspect that in most friendships that die after one became a mom, there is both a lack of the ability of the mom to sustain the same level of involvement with her friend (which is expected), but also a lack of effort on the part of the friend to incorporate her friend's changed circumstances into their relationship (which is purely her choice). My friend's other friend dropped her, sure, but did my friend really reach out in a way that was inclusive of her friend's new status as mother as well as friend? If we have a friend that we love to hike with and they are suddenly confined to a wheelchair, do we drop them, or do we accommodate their new circumstances? A friendship very much takes two people to participate in it, accepting the life circumstances of the other.
So yes, sometimes it just takes time till the mom friend can open her life back up again, and I certainly had that experience with other friends, too, but if it's a close friendship, there are ways to keep it on life support during the harder times.
Oh, Brooke, it happens to so many of us. My kids are now older and are largely self-sufficient, but the thing that saved me when they were much younger was spending a night out a week with friends, if it could at all be helped. It was a lifeline—it kept me sane, kept me current. We are but human before we have children, and we are but human afterward.