Evolution of friendship

Remember when you were little, and to make a new friend all you had to do was show up in a playground, or approach a group of kids and just take off running with them when they did? Then you would ask each other's name and tell your mom a few hours later that you have a new best friend?

As you got older, though, especially as a teen, you think no one gets you, except a few select friends, and you start to understand the meaning of clique. In college you are friends with everybody. Everywhere there are friends to be had. Everyone is so cool.

Then comes life after college and all you hear in the friendship department is crickets and tumbleweeds. People move out, move on and you are left with coworkers. Coworkers usually suck (not you, Julie; you're awesome). You wonder where all those many friends went and what is wrong with you. Why can't you have a million friends, like you used to? You come to terms that this is adult life: you have a select group of buddies and everyone is too busy.

That is, until you have kids. 

You could be walking in a store, any store, your kid in your arms, and you notice another mom with a kid about your kid's age in her arms. You give each other that knowing smile. Her smile says, "I know, right?" And your smile says, "Me too!" You tell her her kid is adorable, because that's what we all say to each other to break the ice, even if the kid looks like a science experiment, and if the line to the cashier is long enough you are in each other's Facebook page by the time you leave. 

I have been blessed to have met in this last year or so since pregnancy the most amazing women. Making friends with other moms is a whole underground and surprisingly warm and easy world that non-moms have yet to find. We get each other. We cry and laugh with each other. Our hairs are a mess, our bodies are not the same, and we wonder if we are ever going to focus and have a proper career again. As a matter of fact, we look back and think our priorities are shockingly different from that pre-pregnancy woman. We think of that version of ourselves as someone with an empty spot. We think she was lost and looking for it in the wrong places. We talk about babies and babies and babies and it never gets tiring. 

To all my mommy friends, especially you, Nicole. Thank you for your friendship!