This weekend, I’m going to a samosa party.
Tragically, we’re making them for charity, not for eating, so I will not get to gorge on fried deliciousness until I explode. But I will learn how to make them for myself, which is pretty exciting/probably bad for my arteries, so it’s a net gain.
**drool**
But the real reason I’m going is to make Mom friends.
Oh, Mom Friends. The friends you desperately need, the only people who really get you, but also the people you’re friends with just because you have both managed to keep a small person alive for a couple of years. Other friends share your passions on a profound level, or know you better than you know yourself, or understand your weird jokes about Milton (hi, SP!). Mom friends know how long a whole day trapped in a house with a toddler is.
You haven’t known the darkest depths of despair & human suffering until you’ve become a parent.
Don’t get me wrong, Mom friends save my sanity. I wouldn’t call the Kraken a passionate pursuit of my life’s purpose, but he’s also what I’m doing 99% of the time, so there’s a big-ass area of my brain devoted to parenting. You know, the part that used to know all the lyrics to “Baby Got Back.” Basically, in an office you need colleagues to grab lunch with, and in parenting you need mom friends.
I’m lying; OF COURSE I still know all the lyrics!
If it’s true that misery loves company, then hoo boy, is it important to share parenting stories with someone else. Someone who has also been projectile pooped on in the middle of a fancy brunch, or who also gave up and let their 18 month old watch four hours of tv because life was just too much, or who also lives off half-eaten chicken nuggets another human being discarded. Basically, life isn’t a competition, and everyone’s struggles are equally important and valid… but only mom friends know about living off two hours of sleep for a week.
Okay, mom friends, and prisoners from Guantanamo.
They should hand everyone a newborn on arrival.
Now that I think of it, a shocking amount of parenting can be compared directly to torture practices. Childbirth is the obvious one (genital mutilation is definitely a human rights violation, you god damn selfish newborn), but I’m pretty sure that having another person touching you literally 100% of your day is some version of water torture, and listening to “Baby Beluga” on repeat for long car rides should be condemned by the UN. Seriously, how is the international community just letting this happen? Children everywhere are getting away with barbaric practices that we shouldn’t put up with in our modern age! We aren’t living in the Middle Ages, people, we shouldn’t have to pretend to be interested in Thomas the Tank Engine for whole days on end!
…This argument seems to have gotten away from me a little bit.
Where was I?
Oh yeah, mom friends.
The real problem with mom friends is that you might know bizarrely intimate details about their daily lives, but if you actually find the time to read a book you really like, you probably have no idea if they’d be interested. Hell, do other moms even read books? What exactly does this mom friend do in her spare time? Oh shit, what if she’s one of those types that gets all her information from Fox News?!
The above is an actual thought process I have gone through with a mom friend. Luckily, I live in Berkeley, so I was pretty safe, re: Fox News.
We miss you, Jon.
What am I trying to say here? I guess I’m drawing a Venn Diagram in my head, and trying to overlap “current life state” with “actual personality connection,” and wistfully imaging that someday, I’ll meet my perfect mom friend. The one who thinks organic is important, but not that important, the one who has strong opinions about Macbeth (hi, The Roommate!), the one who maybe is also studying to be a professional masseuse, and needs to practice her skills on all her friends.
Oh, and maybe she’s a great cook, and always has too many leftovers she needs to get rid of!
And she’s rich! And invites us along with her family up to her family’s 8-bedroom beach house every weekend!
“We’ve run out of room in the wine cellar! Will you help us drink some, so we can have more space?”
Okay, or maybe I just need to appreciate that different people understand different parts of me, that I’m a unique butterfly, different from all others in the world. That it’s impossible for any of us to really know one another, and that being exposed to new personalities is the spice of life. That it’s possible to love another person just because she has stretch marks too.
I really wouldn’t mind a mom friend with a beach house though.
Glint of Light 