Don’t Forget Friends!

I am so very, very worried about missing part of my children’s lives. I wish I could stay home rather than working so I could spend weekdays with them and not lose those precious daytime hours. Stay at home mothers can make me jealous with their most mundane of stories. I’m even jealous of my husband because he is the one to get the kids ready for daycare in the mornings (a jealousy he absolutely does not understand, I might add.)

I worried when they were babies that I would miss their first steps, their first words, their first kisses and first scrapes. And I worry now that I won’t know all of the 18-month-old’s words or the 4-year-old’s friends. That I won’t be able to give advice to them for all the different situations they’ve been in throughout the day.

I want to be there for their every moment and file it all away in my memory so I can treasure it from now through eternity, because I know these are moments I can never have back.

Between this desire to know every minute of my children’s days and the neediness that defines young children, it’s very easy for me to lose my own life.

The friends I spend the most time with (and I’m pretty sure I’m not too different from other parents in this regard) are what I call “baby friends.” Friends that came along after the baby and because of the baby. These friends invariably have babies themselves. And we have some awesome baby friends.

But every once in a while I realize how long it’s been since I last talked with old friends. Friends that were around before even the idea of a baby. Friends that know me as just me.

Of course the me they knew even six years ago is a very different person than the me of 2012. But that, I think, is one of the very reasons that those pre-baby friends should stay in any parent’s life. Because it’s not a bad thing to change when you become a parent, but it’s an easy thing to forget who you are altogether.

I want to thank all the pre-baby friends that made the effort of staying my friend through the years and the moves and the changes, especially all the Sigma Kappas! You have helped me keep my sanity and my identity, and kept me grounded, whether I wanted to be or not.

This month, let’s all make a concerted effort to have a good long conversation with a few of those old friends and remember the days before life got in the way, kids or otherwise. Better yet, let’s make a concerted effort to go out with one or two of them. Maybe even without the kids…