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The Friends Who Got Away

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by Caryn Berardi

I had just found a seat in the spacious hotel ballroom where the conference keynote address was about to begin when, despite an overabundance of empty chairs, another woman sat down next to me.

I know professional conferences are for networking, but I usually like to sit alone at the keynote program. In case the speaker is boring, I can scroll through Facebook without feeling self-conscious. But instead, my new neighbor said “hi.” I put my phone down and said “hi” back.  

And so began a beautiful friendship between two women who lived in the same city, worked in the same profession, had babies the same age, and were both trying to figure out how to handle it all. We shared like worries: Are we taking care of our kids the “right” way? As we approach midlife, are we where we want to be (or thought we would be) in our careers? We even had an identical complaint about traveling with kids that we were convinced we could turn into a business idea. Somehow, we talked through all of this during a three-day conference. It was simpatico.

Flash forward two weeks: After a back-and-forth of emails and vows to report back with research for our business idea, the messages stopped and the friendship was over before it even began. We never even made it to Facebook friends. I don’t remember her name.

Though short-lived, I still think about this meeting several years later because it is emblematic of some of the “friendships” I have regretted losing most during this season of life: the friends who could have been. Or as I like to call them – the friends who got away. These are women I have connected with because we could connect the BIG parts of life together, like parenting, careers and marriage. But a lack of time, energy and/or proximity kept these relationships from fully forming.

Friendships feel so fleeting right now, popping in and out of life like dolphins breaking the surface in the ocean.

Instant connections are easy. They are based on a common thread like the t-ball team, music class or professional trainings. But once that class or event is over, there is so little time to invest in maintaining the relationship (especially when you haven’t even made the time to call your best friend from college who rubbed your back for four years while you cried over a break-up and/or eliminated that extra tequila shot you should not have taken).

And it is not just with chance meetings, but with people I see regularly, like the other mothers at daycare. I have met such wonderful women through my sons’ school and I do feel that a few of them have moved past the acquaintance zone (meaning, I actually know their names and do not only refer to them as “Billy’s Mom”). But recently one of these friends changed her child’s school and we no longer saw each other at drop-off, pick-up and Halloween parades. Our common thread was cut, and despite the best intentions, we have barely spoken since.

I know it can sound silly to mourn the loss of people I may have only known for one year, six months or even two weeks. This is especially true when research studies tell us that women lose touch with their old friendships in their 20s and 30s as they focus on career and family. As we enter our 40s, we begin to reconnect with those friends as both our children grow up and nostalgia for our younger selves grows stronger. In other words, we start calling our best friend from college more regularly again.

I’m still in the trenches with my kids, but as I get older, I understand the research. Revitalizing my older friendships has become more important as we begin to care for our parents, navigate marital changes and re-think our professional paths. Sometimes it’s nice to ask the friend who has known you since you were both 10 years old if her hips hurt as much as yours when she stands up.

And perhaps that’s what makes these friendships that got away different – there is no real foundation for reconnecting like there are with ones from the past. There wasn’t enough time to form a bond strong enough that it can be wheeled back in when life opens up again. When they’re gone, they’re gone.

And after wondering why I kept thinking about these encounters, I realized it was because I don’t want my days of making new friends to be over. It seemed like one more entry on the list of “firsts” I won’t ever experience again.

When I reflect on the people I’ve met in the last few years, they are not all just beginnings of relationships. A precious few have endured to become treasured friends, confidantes and supporters. It takes time, saying yes to a coffee when I’d rather read a book, and cleaning my house to host a Sunday afternoon barbecue so our families can also get to know each other. But as I watch these fledgling friendships develop, it is well worth it.

***

Every time I’m at the airport, wrangling my twin boys and all of our stuff through the gate, I think about my friend from the conference and our business idea. I wonder if she’s had more children, if she’s still a counselor, and if her husband got into the MBA program he was applying to when I met her. I don’t know enough about her to wonder about anything other than what came up in those two weeks.

I still attend the annual professional conference where we met. Perhaps we will find ourselves once again sitting next to each other at the keynote address and invite each other over for a barbecue and a second chance of friendship.

 

Caryn takes her 10+ years of experience in higher education as both an instructor and career coach to write about personal and professional development, as well as help businesses and universities tell their stories. A mom to twin boys, she also writes about her own parenting experience as a way to make sense of the joys and challenges of motherhood. Her work has appeared in national and local magazines, as well as sites such as HuffPost, ScaryMommy, Modern Loss and as a contributor to the anthology, Multiples Illuminated, Volume 2. Her home on the internet is here.

Love in the Time of the Garbage Patch

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by Sarah Reddick

sarah reddick

I met her on OKCupid, a dating app she immediately described to me as a “spice rack of dysfunction.” We started talking and didn’t stop for two months.

She is forty-five, lives in Nashville, originally from New York City. I am thirty-nine, I live in St. Louis, but I have been visiting Nashville frequently, so it seemed providential that we should fall into each other’s laps when we did. Our conversations were warm, intelligent, kind. We made plans to go on our first date in Nashville, and after a lovely dinner, we stood in the street, in the halo glow of a streetlight, and kissed. I initiated it. We lingered a while after, shyly smiling, and a huge Ford truck drove by and honked repeatedly when I reached to kiss her again.

I barely blinked when she told me she lives with her parents. And that she is in AA and still sees her sponsor several times a week. I did blink when she told me she is in a protracted custody battle with her ex-husband, “a bearded, cardigan-wearing man who lives in Park Slope and really loves to talk about all of his feelings.” I maybe should have deleted her phone number when she told me her mom still irons her pants before she goes to teach young adults how to be fully-functioning adults at a nearby university. But I was fascinated by all of it: the fact that she had been married to two men and came out as queer at thirty-five, her academic essay on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, her un-ironic bulletin board in a bedroom that looked like a time warp back to high school and I would have to sneak out of the window after a hot make-out session. I was even into her routine of running on the treadmill at the Y while watching my Netflix suggestions before going home to meditate with her stone deaf step-dad.

She said things like, “You are the yin to my yang,” and “I’m so glad we aren’t rushing sex, because I feel like this could be a deep thing, a long-term thing.” She told me I was a brilliant writer. She asked me to curate a collection of queer poetry for her classes, and asked me to include a few of mine.

I visited her several times. She never offered to buy me dinner, though I was doing all of the traveling, and she admitted that in her current living situation she pays no bills. She didn’t even buy me dessert after I guest-moderated a research panel during her final week of classes. But I really enjoyed kissing her, and I did a lot of that upstairs at her parents’ house. It felt illicit in a non-seedy way. I knew I could like her more when she leaned back on the couch and smile/smirked at me before saying, “I’m really vulnerable with you. You make me feel myself more than anyone I’ve dated in a very long time.”

She told me horror stories about the artist in Montauk, a woman who invited her for weekends but didn’t stock up on anything edible and made her climb a very tall ladder to reach a rickety loft bed for sleep and sex. She told me about the friend of her mom’s she dated (what?) who would show up unannounced with Thai food and wait in the bushes for someone to let her in. She told me about The Neophyte, a younger conquest who liked to wear sexy lingerie for her. “I wasn’t really into it, but if she was, then I also felt like I didn’t really mind it.”

The last time I saw her, I had a sneaking feeling that I would turn into one of these stories sooner than later. How would she paint me? Which brush would she use, and would it be awkward for the woman she performed me for like it had been for me?

I didn’t have to wait long for the wrap up. She had offered to come visit me and we had been planning her trip for two weeks. A few days before she was to arrive, she emailed me (which was strange and felt cold because we had never emailed about anything other than professional type things) that she wasn’t coming. Her custody battle is wearing her out, she said, and I pictured her laying on the couch upstairs, with absolutely nothing to do for the summer, staring in frustration at a wrinkled spot on her goldenrod-colored khakis that her mom had carelessly missed.

I replied that I was disappointed, and she waited a few hours before responding with, “I am frightened because I think you are moving deeper and faster than I am.” This absolutely baffled me of course, so I asked her to call me, because I would prefer not to have this discussion through Gmail. Silence. I called her once the following day, and sent her a handful of emails, some irritated, some trying to make sense of her sudden about-face. I finally got three lines back, in which she passive-aggressively suggested I was being overtly aggressive and then there were no further communications from either side.

I’ve been over-thinking this, because it seems indicative of so many bigger problems, and not just mine, personally. How do we build lasting relationships when we behave like children who distractedly drop our toys mid-play and run away to something/someone else? Is technology causing a wide-scale interpersonal regression event that will never stop? I have also been thinking a lot about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, because it really was an excellent article, and as I finished writing this last sentence, I fished my plastic yogurt spoon out of the trash can under my desk while thinking of some way to repurpose it so it doesn’t end up burdening something else: the clear, irritating adornment a 200-year-old turtle never asked for, a reminder of the damage of being wantonly wasteful. 

 
sarah reddickSarah Reddick is a writer, editor, and a writing professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her work has previously appeared in The Local Voice, The Mid-Rivers Review, and Salt Journal.

You Can Be Friendly Without Committing to Friendship

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By Nina Badzin

Instead of answering an anonymous question this month, I want to discuss a friendship article from The Today Show’s parenting site that’s appeared consistently on my social media feeds since February. Rachel Macy Stafford, author of Hands Free Mama and Only Love wrote, “Am I Invisible? One Mom’s Pain-Relieving Response to Being Excluded“.

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There’s a good reason it pops up every few days from various friends and pages I follow. Who hasn’t been left out as a kid and as an adult? Who hasn’t struggled with their kids getting excluded and excluding others? Who wouldn’t want some pain relief?

Stafford’s piece begins with a familiar situation. She brings her daughter to a new extracurricular activity, one where the other families have been going already, and her attempts to inspire more than a passing glance and grunt from the other moms is a failure. But after several weeks of the same treatment, instead of feeling bitter and ashamed, Stafford feels grateful to these women for reminding her how she wants to operate in the world and what she wants to teach her daughter about treating new people. Among those lessons is this nugget: 

“Remember the deepest desire of the human heart is to belong … to be welcomed … to know you are seen and worthy of kindness.”

Stafford recalls moments when she’s seen the power of one welcoming person. No, we don’t need every person to include us and our kids, but it makes a tremendous impact when at least one smiling face acknowledges our worthiness. Sure, in an ideal world we wouldn’t need that external validation. But find me a kid or an adult who doesn’t shine brighter when seen by a few others, even by one other person.

It’s normal to feel defeated and ashamed after being excluded, but it might help, if, like Stafford, we think beyond who should be more welcoming to us and instead ask ourselves if there’s one person or one kid who could use our help. As Stafford recounts those memories when one person made all the difference and times she and her daughter have helped others, she is again grateful to the women at her daughter’s class who didn’t want to let them in the circle. 

“I nearly forget what I have the power to do until one Tuesday afternoon when I take my daughter to an activity, and I am reminded. I approach two women hoping for kindness, but I am met with rudeness.”

Stafford’s essay continues and I recommend reading every word. I relate to her description of the women at the activity who for weeks in a row turned their backs, making it clear they had no interest in her presence, nor would they encourage their daughters to warm up to Stafford’s daughter. It wasn’t personal, per se. These women didn’t know Stafford or her daughter enough not to like them. It was the total disinterest that stung—the not-so-subtle hint that for these women the nuisance of bringing in someone new trumped however uncomfortable it might have felt to know there was a fellow mom off to the side alone week after week.

I had a similar experience when I moved to Minneapolis after college and again a few years later when I had my first child. My oldest is fourteen this week, but I still see the shoulders closing me out; I remember the body language that screamed, We don’t need new friends.

Now, listen, I do have friendship lines in the sand and support them for others. While I’m often complimented for being a local connector — and it’s a compliment I accept proudly — I would never argue that everyone has to be close friends, or even more than friendly acquaintances. If you take nothing else from this essay, take this:

You can be friendly without committing to lifelong friendship.

Inviting someone to join you once for lunch doesn’t commit you to decorating her locker on her birthday from now until you graduate from high school. Acknowledging that someone else exists doesn’t make you best friends. You get the idea.

I’m the first to say there is often no explanation for good chemistry or the lack of it. I’ve been writing the friendship column at The HerStories Project for over three years to help people who are struggling to make new friends, keep the friends they have, or move away from the friends who are causing them more stress than joy. You will never hear me say that everyone new to town, new to your kid’s baseball team, or new to the office needs to become an integral part of your social life. Most of us don’t have the bandwidth to take in every fresh face.

But I believe in kindness. There’s a universe between allowing someone to hang out for an hour with you at the park and suddenly having to include that family in your kid’s birthday parties until the end of time. Or your group trip, happy hours, or whatever you would like to keep more intimate. I’m all for intimate. I complain when there’s more than six people at a dinner so I get that everyone can’t be invited to everything. 

Is it possible to simultaneously teach our kids that we can’t be included in everything while also encouraging them to be the type of soul who includes or at least sees—really sees—others? Lord knows I’m trying. If you have tips, I’m all ears.

Friendship is complicated. I love Stafford’s piece because she rises above what we should expect from others and asks us to consider what we can do for others. If we don’t like feeling invisible, we can make a point to acknowledge someone who’s alone or struggling.

Like Stafford, I’m grateful I’ve been forced to remember (more than once) as an adult how much it stings when people treat you as if even ten minutes of small talk is a real hassle, as if you and your child would take away a crucial element of the group rather than add to the group’s breadth and depth of friendship experience. It’s made me a connector for others and given me the empathy I need to call on now and then when I, too, get overly protective of my social circle and time.

Thank you, Rachel Macy Stafford, for the reminder that we can do better, that we can be more generous, that we can be kind.

See a list of friendship questions Nina has answered over the past three years and send your own anonymous question any time.

Teaching My Son That Great Men Let Tears Fall

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 by Angela Anagnost-Repke

 

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“Will I cry, Mommy?”

My son’s voice trembled before getting his three-year-old immunization shots. We sat in the cramped room of the pediatrician’s office—my son, my one-year-old daughter, and me. My son crumpled the paper on the patient bed while I sat in a chair with my daughter in my lap. I prepped him before the well-visit, but knowing that he needed three shots, I was realistic that there would be crying. He had endured numerous check-ups and remembered that they didn’t only include the doctor asking Mommy questions, but also the female aide who pushed the needles into his skin.

Pressing my pointer finger and thumb together, I said, “It will just feel like a quick pinch. And you’ll be tough.”

Standing, the male doctor asked all of the typical check-up questions. Near the end, he asked if I had any for him. I did have questions about my son’s speech, but forgot as I brawled with my daughter who pulled down the blinds over and over again. Apparently, she couldn’t read the photocopied sign, “DON’T TOUCH THE BLINDS,” taped to the wall.

So instead of talking about my son’s speech, I nodded to the doctor, smiled, and whispered “I’m sorry,” every time her chubby fingers dove for the blinds. “That’s okay,” he said. “You’re doing a great job with the kids.”

“Good enough,” I joked. After the doctor concluded all was well in the well-visit, it was time for the doctor to exit and the aide to enter as a waitress—balancing the small silver tray full of needles with her rubber-gloved hands.

My son tensed at the sight of the needles. I pretended to be calm—but was dreading the pain he would feel. I stood next to him, my daughter on my hip, with my palm on his back while he sat upright. I didn’t need to hold his hands down. He was ready.
“Okay, honey. Look up at your mommy,” the aid directed my son.

He didn’t listen. He steadied his eyes on the needles.

We watched three rifling rounds plunge into his still-chubby thigh. He clenched his eyes and squeezed his lids shut. After the shots were done, he inhaled a colossal breath and opened his almost-black eyes. His long lashes were dry. Both his body and mine deflated with ease.

 “I’m so proud of you honey,” I said. “You didn’t even cry.”

And to celebrate my son’s toughness, I took him out for ice cream. He didn’t need to know about his mother’s own need to choke down tears, especially when life seems relentless—piercing shots into your spirit instead of your skin.

On our drive to the ice cream shop, pride fired out of my pores, ricocheting off all of the car seats. With my right hand at eleven o’clock, I smiled, a truly victorious mother.  Look at me, I thought. I am raising a tough boy—one who doesn’t cry. My son will be just as strong as his uncles, my three brothers. Maybe stronger. Those idiots used to fart into my dad’s old plastic cigar containers and throw “fart bombs” into my bedroom to make me cry. Then one day, the disgusting act stopped making me cry. God, I love them. They never treated me differently as the only girl, making me tough, too—maybe tougher.

We walked into the ice cream shop holding hands as the sugar perfumed our noses. My kids stood below the counter, their hands smudging the glass while staring at the buckets of ice cream. Oreo, chocolate, vanilla, Superman, Moose Tracks, strawberry, and more. My son was deciding which flavor to choose and whether he wanted a cone or a cup. Tugging at my shirt, he begged, “Stwa-baweeeey! Cone too, Mommy?”

“Sure, honey,” I said.

The girl scooping the ice cream was probably twenty and home from college. I couldn’t hold my pride in any longer. “We’re getting ice cream because this boy just had three shots. And he didn’t even cry.”

“Well,” the ice cream girl replied, “maybe I’ll give this big guy an extra scoop.”

I paid the girl and we marched outside to sit on the wooden picnic table on a mild Michigan June day. There, my son sat with his pink ice cream cone. His little sister and I shared a chocolate cup. The sun warmed our faces, but didn’t melt our ice cream too fast. My son grinned with a perfect pink ring around his lips. He was happy.

And at three years old, my son learned that to be strong means that you better not cry. Tough boys get things in life. They get ice cream.

—-

Growing up, my Greek alpha-male brothers and I all fought to be the Spartan King—or Queen. There’s never been a clear winner, even today in our thirties and forties. Yet, we were full of love for each other—loud and boisterous. We were there for one another. But the tears, those were scarce.

When we were younger, our family of six would cram into our 1990 Astro Mini Van and drive south to Myrtle Beach. One day, when I was about eleven, I swam in the ocean alone. The waves’ hands were motioning to me, challenging me saying, “Bring it on, little one.” I accepted.

My feet planted into the wet sand and the broken shells scratched my feet. As I stepped out deeper, a couple waves smashed over my head, gushing water into my nose. The sting of what felt like Worcestershire sauce in my nostrils burned, but I got back up.

A monstrous wave came. I turned my back against it, but that wave pulled me under—hard. My right knee slammed into what felt like broken glass. When the wave was done with me, I was able to stand and breathe. I looked down and my knee was gashed—bloody with grains of sand mixed in. But, my eyes were dry.

I stood proud. And instead of running to my mother crying, I strutted to my brothers. I wanted them to see that as a girl, I could create a bullet-proof vest, too. Like my brothers, no one would ever suspect my vulnerabilities.

As an adult, I’ve watched my father endure a near life-ending sepsis attack and my mother almost become another number to cancer’s merciless hands. I’ve been with friends and family through tragedies, never crying in their presence. My car served as my personal cry room, only I allowed no one to hush me.

It wasn’t until recently, months after my son’s immunization shots, that I took off my bullet-proof vest in front of my husband. My mother’s cancer was ravaging her body. And picturing the day I’d call her and she wouldn’t pick up was finally more than I could handle alone.

 My husband turned on the cartoons for the kids. We climbed into our unmade bed, and I finally let someone else’s arms support me. At first, I didn’t know how to do it—to let him see me vulnerable. It felt like trying to parallel park for the first time—seeming impossible and awkward.

 I sunk into my husband, stiff at first. His arms swaddled me and his chest was my pillow. As his fingers stroked my hair, my body softened, and I cried. This was the first time in my life that at five-feet-tall, I felt small. I exhaled relief. Relief that my tense body would not break if it turns gentle. Relief that I didn’t have to endure my mother’s cancer alone. Relief that after eight years of marriage and fifteen years of love, I finally gave all of myself to my husband.

About a year after my son earned his ice cream trophy and my husband coached me how to cry, a couple of my brothers flew in to celebrate my kids’ fourth and second birthdays. My son and daughter were taking turns jumping off our wooden coffee table onto a giant beanbag in the center of the family room. They love showing off in front of their uncles. My son missed, hitting his knee on a wooden block we failed to pick up. His mouth turned into an upside-down horseshoe, shuddering.

One of my brothers looked, but sat cemented in his chair. His eyes said, “If you ever want to be a man, you better not cry.”

My son’s lower eyelids were buckets—heavy with water wanting to spill over the brims. I looked at his eyes and said, “It’s okay to cry.”

He did.

Our bodies softened. I went to him, hugging him.

As I had done hundreds of times as his mother, I cradled him. My brother’s face relaxed and he crawled off of the chair to the floor. With his knees edged into the carpet, he patted my son on the back and said, “You’ll be okay, buddy.”

In return, my brother looked at me in agreement. Like my husband taught me, I will coach my son that all emotions are okay and crying is necessary. I didn’t have to tell my brother about losing my bullet-proof vest. He understood.

I want my son to know that it’s okay to cry. In fact, I hope he does.

The ability to gulp down tears does not make you a man. Being able to express a wide gamut of emotions does.

I’ll help my son foster these skills. Maybe, with my husband’s continued help, of course, we can encourage our son to express all of his feelings—without shame. He won’t need to follow Spartan Family Code, or society’s Boy Code. Big emotions in men won’t be taboo—not in our house.

I regret that it took me so many years to exhibit vulnerability to my deserving husband. And honestly, there are times I want to pick my armor up off the floor, but my husband always reminds me to leave it there. So, I hope my son does cry and lets people see it. Being tough isn’t important, but being real is. And to let someone in, to truly let them in, you have to cry.

That night we celebrated the kids’ birthdays with cake and ice cream. My son spooned the Oreo ice cream into his mouth. He smiled with his uncles—loving him despite the tears.

Because they too, will help my husband and I teach my son that great men let tears fall. 

 

angela repkeAngela Anagnost-Repke is a flawed mother who turns to writing to help in both her daily blunders and rediscovering herself outside of motherhood. She has been published in Good Morning America, ABC News, Scary Mommy, The Good Men Project, MSN Lifestyle, Mothers Always Write, and others. Angela also has an essay in an anthology by Belt Publishing, “Red States, Blue States.” She is passionate about the comradery of motherhood and is an advocate of a moms’ night out. She is at work on a cross-generational memoir, Mothers Lie.

Why Don’t My Kids Understand How Cool I Am?

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By Meredith Bland
meredith bland

It took us ten years to get here, but it has finally happened: my kids no longer think I’m cool. In fact, they think I am really, truly, mind-numbingly uncool.

It became official this morning while my daughter was looking at her iPad. “Oh, no,” she cried, “Gabe the Dog died!”

“Gabe the Dog?” I asked, “What’s that?”

“You know, the dog from YouTube? The one who barks songs?”

“He did what, now? What songs? Like, popular songs?”

Sigh. “Never mind, Mom.”

And you know exactly how that “Never mind, Mom” sounded. This wasn’t a “Never mind, Mom,” as in “Never mind, Mom. I realize that a dog whose barks are edited the to the tunes of current hit songs doesn’t even make the top one thousand things you think about on a daily basis.” It was more of a “Never mind, Mom. I won’t trouble you with this because I know you need to focus all of your attention on making sure you can breathe with your mouth closed.”

How did this happen? It seems like just the other day my kids were telling me they wanted to live with me forever, an idea that, yes, horrified me but also touched my heart. Now, all of a sudden, they don’t even want to go shopping with me for fear that I will do something humiliating like hold up a plain white tee-shirt and ask if they like it. Are they embarrassed because their mother, who has an appreciation for fashion’s classic, basic pieces, has foolishly offered them a suggestion? Or is it because I occasionally ask these questions using cool, old-school nicknames like “Benny Bear” and “Meggy Poo”? I think we can all agree that there’s no way of knowing.

I could almost empathize with them if I was, in fact, doing something embarrassing. At some point, most children become humiliated by the fact that their parents live and walk amongst us.

I certainly remember feeling that way about my mom when I was a kid. The difference is that my mother used to dance in the grocery store when they played songs like “The Twist” and “All Shook Up,” whereas when I dance in the grocery store, it’s to “Oops…I Did It Again” and “Billie Jean.” It’s completely different.

I always assumed that if or when my kids did eventually become embarrassed of me, it would be because they were too young to understand what makes me such a rad mom. I figured that they just wouldn’t get how awesome it is to have a mom how swears not just out of anger, but as a necessary seasoning for everyday language. Instead, it seems that they understand exactly who I am and have still decided that I am a full-bore nerd, which is unbelievable because I just used “rad” in a sentence. Those kids see me out there living my best life, and they would still prefer that I not speak to other people in their presence.

It doesn’t make any ding dang sense.

It’s especially hard to accept all of this when you consider the journey I took to become such a cool mom. The fact is, I wasn’t particularly cool growing up. I wasn’t part of the popular crowd and I wore turtlenecks long past their shelf-date. (I even wore a turtleneck “dickie” for a while. Google them. They’re appalling.)

But once I grew up and got out of college I did some really cool stuff: I self-consciously bounced around to Lauryn Hill and The Roots in concert. I rode on the roof of a car, holding on for dear life to the wrist of a boy who was using his hand to hold on to my more attractive friend. I told a Frenchman to go f**k himself, in French, in Paris, on New Year’s Eve, after he hit on my more attractive friend. I turned down cocaine, once, dammit!

And therein lies the problem: I am so cool that I can’t tell my children all the reasons why I’m cool until they are grown and/or I am on my deathbed. Sure, I can drop hints about my coolness with comments like, “Oh yeah, I’ve had alcohol before.” But can I tell them about the time I drank so much strawberry-flavored alcohol that I threw up in a college shower after putting strawberry-scented shampoo in my hair the next morning? No, I cannot. And that story is awesome.

Yes, I’ve done things these kids wouldn’t believe, because they’re 10-years-old and don’t know what a “hastily aborted threesome” is yet. No, I have to bide my time, wearing ripped jeans, calling them “dude,” and singing every word of “Rapper’s Delight” in the carpool lane till they are old enough for me to whisper in their ears, “Psst…while you’re getting my walker, I want to make sure you know that you should never get a tattoo in Ireland from an old man with bad vision and his drawing arm in a sling. Ask me how I know.”

The high-fives are coming. They might not arrive for another ten years, but they are coming and they will be heartfelt and plentiful. And then these kids, these kids who say, “Mom, could you not do that” on an almost-daily basis, then they’ll be sorry.

Meredith BlandMeredith Bland is a freelance writer whose work has appeared at Scary Mommy; Cosmo.com; Time.com; Brain, Mother; and The Rumpus, among others. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two kids.

When a Mean Girl Excludes You From a Group of Friends

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UPDATE (2019): FIND NINA AND HER COLUMN AT HER NEW FRIENDSHIP ADVICE SITE

 

Our advice columnist Nina Badzin is back with a dilemma from a woman who moved to her husband’s hometown and inherited his less-than-friendly group of friends. She likes some of them, but one “mean girl” in particular seems determined to exclude our letter writer.

Nina is always accepting anonymous questions here.  

her take mean girl

 

Dear Nina,

When my husband and I moved to his hometown, I knew nobody here. His group is generally very welcoming to all newcomers. I’ve seen strong friendships form among other newcomers and “old timers.” But as one of the first women in the group to have a baby, I was quickly left out. This was understandable (sadly) until other women also became mothers and still left me out.

For nearly a year, a “powerful” or at least “controlling,” woman in my husband’s friend group has been excluding me, pretty blatantly, since she too became a mother. My husband and I have no idea why. It is pretty clear to us that she’s trying to engineer the social group to exclude me. She plans things without including me and without my husband now too, by extension. They used to be good friends.

I do not feel I’m missing out on her friendship, but what upsets me (and my husband very much), is that she is trying to close the whole group off from us. My husband’s best friend has a fiancée, and naturally we two couples have grown closer as a group of four. The excluder is now becoming very buddy-buddy with this new fiancée, excluding me. It seems very deliberate. The fiancée is “new” and doesn’t realize this, of course. It is not her problem, but I can see how it will get awkward fast.

There is so much more detail, but it is too difficult to explain in writing. Basically, our group dynamic is getting messed up by a self-centered person who fancies herself an “influencer.” Having no other family or friends around and the reality of how difficult it is to start from scratch making friends as new parents who are busy with our children, this situation is really harmful to us. My husband is so angry and upset and has tried to find out what the deal is, but it’s a mystery. I am not close enough to Excluder to ask her directly. What should we do?

Tired of Getting Excluded

Dear Tired of Getting Excluded,

The Allure of His Friendship Group

The temptation to make your husband’s group your group makes perfect sense. Almost 18 years ago when I moved to my husband’s hometown, I was distraught when I realized he had no such group to make for an easy transition to my new town.

Although my husband (fiancée at the time) and I had spoken about that reality of starting over before we arrived in Minneapolis, I guess I thought he was being hyperbolic—as if by “no group” he meant, “only a few of them moved back to town or never left.”

Nope. He meant no friendship group, not even a small one. He had been living away from Minneapolis for a decade already, and although he had a few friends from the old days, I really did have to create my own social life. And it was hard. On the positive side, I can tell you now, 18 years later, I feel very much at home in Minnesota. And it did not take more than a few years. I promise.

I used to tell my new-to-town story with a “woe is me” slant, but now that I’ve read your letter, I’m going to stop telling it that way. Maybe it’s easier and better to start from zero; you get to make your own way with no expectations to be friends with people your significant other met at some point in childhood or adolescence.

Mean Girls

I am thrilled you put “powerful” and “controlling” in quotes because in these cases of friend-group power plays, people only have the influence over us we hand them on a platter. Her power isn’t real. Her control also isn’t real unless you allow this situation to control you. She might control others’ actions, but you get to make your own decisions.

It’s time to stop hoping your husband’s group will become your inner circle. Excluder sounds awful, but what are we to make of these women who are following Excluder? I also think it’s time your husband make some new friends, but as I said, you can only control YOU.

I’m not even going to bother arming you with tips on dealing directly with Excluder. She’s a classic mean girl. I agree that it seems as though she doesn’t like you. We don’t know why. I want you to decide not to care. There’s no way you can ask her what her problem is without sounding paranoid or insecure. I want you to rise above needing an explantation from her. She would not likely tell you the truth anyway. She has her reasons and those reasons are her business. I am willing to bet those reasons are more about her than you anyway.

Listen, not everyone has good chemistry. There were all kinds of women who didn’t care for me when I moved to town. Some still don’t, I’m sure. I learned to make peace with the fact that chemistry is mysterious and things don’t always work out as we hope. Friend plates get full. We say the wrong thing one time and people don’t forget. Haven’t there been people you didn’t want to pursue a friendship with for reasons you could hardly articulate? I know that has been true for me. We have to allow others the same space. The worst thing you can do for your social life is overly focus on this one group of friends. It’s time to let this crew go, and start your search for real connections.

Your New Friends Do Not Need To Fall Into One Friendship Group

This was a great question to run by mom who is often-quoted in this column. She met my father when she was a junior at Northwestern and he was a grad student. While my mom had come to Northwestern from Rochester, New York, my dad was raised in the Chicago suburbs. She, like me and like you, ended up in her husband’s hometown. Here’s her advice:

“When I graduated from Northwestern, I had been married for a year. Suddenly my college friends left for other parts of the country, and I felt like I had no one left other than my husband—-no family and no friends. Tired of Getting Excluded needs to find new friends, and they don’t need to be in one particular group. She can join “mom and tot” groups. If she likes to exercise, she should join an exercise class. In other words, she should look for friends outside the “group.”  She can have a variety of friends who don’t know each other. She should pursue her interests and find others with similar interests. It takes a long time to form friendships. She needs to be patient and keep working at it. And she needs to be the initiator sometimes. Through the years, I often times was the one to pick up the phone and make dates. She shouldn’t wait for others to take the initiative. I still do that. If there is someone I want to be with, I make the call or email.”

Be The Initiator

My mom and I have The Initiator trait in common. If I waited for every friend to schedule a walk or a lunch or a couples’ outing with me, I would be waiting FOREVER. I actually think the key to a happy social life is adopting the initiator mentality and not keeping score—within reason. Meaning, if you’re making the plans with any particular person more than, say, four times, it may be worth letting that person know you’d love to be on the receiving end of the call (text, email, etc.) sometimes.

I hope this all helps. I wish you the best in your new friend making endeavor. It’s like dating, but better, because you get to keep as many of the good relationships as you want. I have a good feeling that some new close friends are out there waiting for you to find them.

Good luck and let me know how it goes,

Nina