Friends With Training Wheels.

The problem with blogging while you're in emotional flux is that you start to write and realize you're questioning everything you think and say. "Am I being defensive here?" "Maybe I'm transferring here...." "Maybe I'm glossing over my emotions?"

So all you can do is I don't know. Not post?

I've been looking forward to the day both my kids would be in school every single day since I found out I was pregnant with Madison. I saw those two pink lines and first I thought, "Wow, the pill really can fail." and then I thought....well if I hurry things along they'll both be in school every day when I'm 32."

I even put school supplies on my baby shower registry.

Max starts kindergarten on September 6 and all last year as I tried to keep up with the frenetic pace of Flogging Baby I dreamed of the day I'd have 3 hours to work every single day free of guilt. Guilt because Max watched way too many hours of television in order for me to meet my quota each month.

I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I get a little thrill when thinking about the afternoons of freedom awaiting me in just over a month. But, something very bad has happened. Something I didn't believe possible.

I am crying when I think of summer being over.

At Max's preschool I made friends. Friends who I love and need in my life so much. I used to feel sad all the great women I've met through this website didn't all live on one single block in well maintained homes where we all had the same tolerance for loud stupid music blaring for all the world to forcibly listen to. (This tolerance would be: zero.)

I often felt, through my years with the MOMS Club, that I was a misfit in this place. Motherhood looked different in other places, why couldn't I find mothers more like me?

And I found my friends and I don't mean to rub your noses in it, because I know so many of us are still feeling lost amongst the mothers in our vicinity. But I feel so lucky to know these women. I need them as much, actually I think at this point I need them more, than I need the internet mothers I know.

Since our kids have been in preschool together for the last two years, we've seen each other almost every day. At preschool pick up and car pool pick up. We've had weekly playgroups and we've had girl's nights in where I shared more of myself than I ever have with real life people besides Logan, we've had family nights where we talk and laugh and our kids play and then nights out where we have fun like adults.

I'm not very good at intimate relationships. It's amazing Logan and I have been able to forge the relationship we have. It points to both my honesty with myself and even more so, his extreme patience with difficult women.

I've often called my friends my "friends with training wheels". Sometimes, during conflict with someone or another I feel like I bring Helen Keller to the table, flailing about, to their Anne Sullivan trying to give me the gift of communication. ("It's 'Water' Helen! W-A-T-E-R!")

(As an example: Me: "I just don't know how to tell you when I don't like something you've said. Tell me how I can do it without hurting you." Her: "I don't know....don't personally attack me?" You mean that's not 'helpful'?)

("That's right Helen! It's a doll! D-O-L-L!")

One night early in the summer Leslie talked about how it's not going to be the same in the fall. All our kids are going to different schools and/or attending different kindergarten sessions (some gluttons are sending their kids to AM (insane!), while other lazy people (me!) are sending their kids to PM).

At first I told Logan how sad I was for Leslie and Andrea who both still have 2 and 3 smaller kids at home even though they're oldest kids are starting kindergarten. The other three of us are sending our youngest kids to school, which is like entering a whole new world of living. I was still busy thinking only of the 3 hours I'd have every day to myself.

For the ones with younger siblings at home, they still need as much support because it's hard being at home with little kids all day. It's physically exhausting and emotionally draining. At least it was for me and I only had two little kids at a time.

That night (where we stayed up until 2am on a Thursday talking about, you know, everything) when Leslie brought up how different everything will be next year I tried to contrast Leslie's talk about it being 'different' with how it won't be different. I said we'll still be able to get together as families. We can still have girl's nights. We'll have playdates on half days and vacations.....

But then I started to cry because it will be different and different is scary.

We've all been running in a hundred different directions this summer and it's already different. I'm trying to keep breathing but sometimes, when I let my brain go I start to flail ("It has a name Helen!").

I'm not very good at making friends. It took me nearly seven years to find these friends and I'd like to think the training wheels are working and showing me how to reach out to other people. I know all my friends are great at reaching out and just being who they are and attracting people to them.

I put a helmet on and knee pads and wrist guards and without the training wheels I drive my bike directly into the nearest tree. So I retreat to the safety of my crossed arms standing alone praying for the safety of The Circle Drive.

I was feeling bad for Leslie and Andrea who still have little kids to entertain and take care of all day. But what I realized is I'm also feeling bad for me because I'm afraid of being left behind.

Comments

[Steph]

I'm pretty sad about it, too. It's feeling like the end of an era.
But we all really need each other, and I know we'll find a way to be in each other's lives. I know it'll be different, but it'll still be special. We'll figure it out. I promise.

[Momtowolf]

Melissa...I know how you feel. My Lexi girl started K last year and the days were very different for me and all my close friends.

This year both my kiddos will be in school ALL DAY!!! I can hardly believe it.....

Enjoy your three hours....

[maiareads]

I can relate in my own way... My kids are all safely and happily attending school full time now and I finally found a 30 hour a week position that accomodates their schedule to a T. Why am I wistful and sad? I will be laid off in two weeks..

[PK]

I'm glad you didn't just not post.
xo, for what it's worth.

[Kim E]

I am also sending my smallest to Kindergarten this year and although I'm really looking forward to the little slice of freedom that brings, I'm also very sad to say goodbye to having a 'baby' at home.

Add that to the twinges of guilt that stab me in the back when I get a little too happy about my 2 hours of freedom every single morning. Five days a week!

*groan*

[Lisa V]

9 years ago my oldest entered kindergarten. And everything changed. Even though I still had younger kids it changed. All my friends in my mom's group ( I had a good one, they drink, they swore, they called people assholes) used to complain they never saw me anymore. Why ? Because I was trying to figure out that school thing. By the time my second was also in school I gave up even trying to do playgroup. But the handful of women who were my best friends from playgroup are still my best friends. One my very best. The women I enjoyed but don't hang out with, well we meet for lunch every 6 months and catch up. Plus, the bonus, I found some women through my kid's school who are also my friends.

It's going up the mom food chain. By the time you figure out one age and are reallly good at it, it's time to move on. I'm not talking the kids, I'm talking your role in whatever the new thing is. I'm currently contemplating my oldest going to high school- high school!!- with mean kids and PE and dances and grades that mean everything and trying to figure that out. The scary thing is that the next four years lay the path for the final frontier- college! Bail money, STD's, tuition!

You will find fellow travelers on each part of the journey, some will be familiar, and some will walk up to you at a PTA meeting saying "Jesus I need a drink." Instant friend.

[Jess]

Lisa V.'s right; nothing stays the same. It sounds like you're in a *good* place with your friends, and that there's surely room for continuity....

Y'know, there are all kinds of ways of being left behind. Not to hijack the theme of your post, 'cause I always love reading your blog, but being single and childless in your thirties can lend a whole new meaning to being "left behind." For example, your friends have kids and end up not calling you for *three years in a row*, although you make the effort to call them and whenever you do, they say they really *do* want to get together. Or your friends have kids and seem to opt out of eveything in life that doesn't relate to kids and can't have a conversation beyond kids ("Oh yeah, the war... um, isn't that awful?"). Or there's your circle of friends at work, who are great and whom you rely on, but then you begin to realize that they are cementing their friendships even further, and you're not, because they socialize based on their kids. Then the lunch conversation begins to turn on that, and you can't contribute, because you weren't at the kid's birthday party with your other work colleagues, because it's been determined, I guess, that you wouldn't want to come and socialize with them AND their kids. I won't bother getting started on how much you miss out on when you aren't half of a paired unit (e.g., no husband). That is a whole other realm of disinclusion, and having your social life curtailed for you based on other peoples' judgments. I've decided that calling someone a friend means treating them like an individual person, and NOT categorizing them based on their domestic profile.

I *apologize* for carrying on. I rarely ever comment on a blog. But it feels great to exhale my singleton woes on a "mom" site, because, well... I read this blog, and MIM, and finslippy and SJ because the writers are funny, intelligent, articulate, and WHOLE people, and I enjoy that, no matter what the demographic of the writer. I get my best laughs from these blogs, and I empathize, and I ponder.... Never mind all my junk. I think, Melissa, that there will be lots of good surprises around the corner. You'll have more personal time (so important!), you'll keep some friends and lose others, habits will change, and that would happen anyway, no matter what the occasion or event that prompts the change. Life will be different again six months or two years from now (obviously!) ;)

*Thanks* for maintaining such a great site.

[marian]

Come September will be my first time experiencing having NO child at home — he'll be away at college. I hate the term "empty nest" — like your life is some sort of sad, bombed out shell without your kids. But I too feel bad for my friends whose kids are still home and still young, and who envy my new freedom, and sad for myself as I move into a realm of life I'm not sure I want to identify with!

[tallnlucky]

I am so happy you have mom friends you can relate to. It gives me hope, too.

[The Princess]

I haven't commented here in forever!

I just became a Mom 6 months ago. I stay at home with my daughter and am finding that I really do enjoy it. I have a amazing group of friends who have made this transition quite smooth.

However...

My husband is looking for a new job and it is a good chance that we will be moving out of state. The thought of having to find other women who I can relate with terrifies me.

I think of the post you did when I started reading your site about formula feeding and that awful Mom's group. My daughter is on formula and I have run into the opposition for this as I too attended a Mom's group function.

[quinn]

I wanted to post and assure you that you are not alone, that tons of us feel left behind in various stages when life takes different turns, but Jess up there said pretty much everything I wanted to say. I don't make friends very easily either, and when I even think a friendship is starting to shift it breaks my heart a little.

[dutch]

I can't wait to see what you do with those three hours, though.

[evehorizon]

wait, i thought blogs were specifically made for emotional flux? don't tell me i have to find balance before i begin to type. it's the source of all my hateful inspiration!

[Missy]

While not the same experience, I have just gone from SAHM to working mom and man, are things different.

I only see my closest mom-friends anymore. The rest ask about me like I'm away in a foreign land. "How is Missy? Tell her we say 'hi!'"

Ugh.

Still, enjoy your freedom! One of these days, none of you will have really small kids anymore and you'll still be able to hang out on the weekends. It will get better.

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