Back in the Saddle Again

It was November 2009.  My husband had been on something of a “bromance” kick, with three bachelor parties, two football games, three weddings of best friends…It seemed like for weeks, he was either out of town or out of pocket.  Some months are like that.

There was a gal at the playground.  One far more outgoing than I, with a son the same age as LittleMan, and as the two boys toddled around together we got to chatting.  Her husband had Giants season tickets (as in New York Giants…as in football…as in out-of-state), and she, too, was flying solo quite a bit as he traveled back and forth to the games.  Lo, a friendship was born.

Our boys became thick as thieves (and mischievous as thieves), and they wound up attending the same preschool and loving the same toys and together they have experienced many of life’s “firsts” and probably given me a lifetime’s worth of blog material…but this entry is less about the boys and more about the moms, so I will save those stories for another day.

To backtrack: when you experience the great body-snatch that is parenthood, when your entire social agenda shifts to accommodate midnight feedings and 5am wake-ups and inexplicable shrieking fits in public places, you quickly learn that as much as you LOVE your old friends, the ones without kids…well, you need some new ones, too.  Who get it.  About the kids.  And the body-snatching.

But at the same time, it can be hard to make new friends, out of the blue.  Especially when, like me, you decided early on that mother’s groups and music class aren’t really your scene.  It’s like dating: the park is the new bar, full of potential, fraught with anxiety.  One girlfriend of mine describes it rather beautifully in a vignette on her own blog, here: the sizing up, the nervous hello, using the baby as a prop…(And THEN, just when you’ve found the new friend and the kids get along (such as it is, when they can’t really talk and they don’t like to share and hitting and biting are considered “communicating”), well, THEN you have to introduce the husbands, which is a whole other compatibility test.  Will you just be park friends?  Or will you make it to happy hour some day?  Is the double-date even an option, or is that a bridge too far?)

Oh, the agony.

Suffice to say, I was most pleased, back in 2009, to find this lovely friend and she has been a fabulous and fun addition to my life.  Over the years, our lunch table has grown from two adults and two kids to two adults and FIVE kids.  It was with the most recent addition, her lovely girl, that she and her husband decided to make The Move.

It’s not that far away, really, just over the bridge and through the tunnel, where the sun shines more often and with greater strength and there is a bit more room to run around.  The boys still have playdates and we still meet up for walks with the babies.  But last Thursday was a particularly gloomy day, cloudy and windy, and when Babygirl and I arrived at the playground where my friend and I met three years ago, with no familiar faces in sight, I suddenly felt so…tired, I guess is the right word.  Tired at the prospect of getting back in the dating game, as it were.

It happens that this month my husband and I have taken a critical first step in NOT making The Move ourselves.  We transferred LittleMan to a new pre-K, which will automatically roll into a Kindergarten when the time comes.  This, too, is a good-news post for another day (soon, soon!).  So our Kindergarten Question is answered (or at least we know we have the option).

LittleMan has been in daycare with the same kids since he was one.  So this is the very first time in his little life where he has gone to school knowing no one (and the first time in a couple of years he has been without his trusty best friend from the playground).  He is handling it beautifully, with more courage and confidence than I would display in those circumstances.

But the other day I asked him about the new friends he is making, and he said to me: “Mommy, it’s hard.  Because everyone already has a best friend at this school.  And all my best friends are at my old school.  So I don’t have any best friends anymore.”

“It will come with time, LittleMan,” I assured him, tears stinging my eyes unexpectedly.  “You just keep doing what you’re doing.  The new friends will get to know you soon.”

So LittleMan marches into this new classroom every day, head held high, looking his tablemates right in the eye. “Hi Kate.  Hi Augie.”  He picks up a marker to color, while they look at him like they still haven’t figured out who he is.  He perseveres: “Can I play with you today?  You wanna read a book with me after we finish our papers?”

I leave him there, feeling so proud and nervous on his behalf, and I can’t help thinking there’s a lesson in there for Mommy.  When pick-up time comes I stand a little straighter, and I keep my phone (that digital crutch) in my bag.

Look around.  Smile.  It will come with time.

“It’s Karen, right?” I say to the only mom I recognize.

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