CHENNAI : I am done making new friends. I’m too old for it.’ Over the years, I’ve said these words a lot. Only to shift apartment, country, city or have a baby, or have another baby, or start a new job and realise, I can’t afford to say that.When we’re kids we make friends over a shared love for certain games, TV shows and books (I had one friend in middle school based entirely on a shared passion to dissect Mills and Boons heroes). As we get older, the criteria for who we want to hang out with shifts, but it’s still usually based around certain mutual areas of interest.
Then we become parents and friendships turn in to a potentially minefield ridden landscape.
What if you’re the only one in your friends’ circle to have kids? Will you chatter nervously about how ‘great’ the baby is and miss the eye rolls? Or, what if your friends have kids that are obnoxious and remind you of Damien and you don’t want to hang out with them in case you’re killed by a tricycle? What if your friends’ kids make your kids cry? Or your kid make your friend’s kid cry? Then your kids make their own friends and you wonder ‘Could we hang out with their parents?’ Sometimes you can, and sometimes the parents are obnoxious and remind you of Damien and you want to kill them with your tricycle.
Recent conversations with two very different friends made me realise — it’s important to cast the friendship net far and wide. Friendships with parents of younger kids will help you feel Yoda-esque, relieved and a tad smug. Friendships with parents of older children will potentially give you sleepless nights. Friendships with people who hate children and would rather raise llamas are a refreshing break from the Toddler/Middle School Olympics.
Conversation one was conducted entirely over messenger, and I admitted freely to my friend that I was feeling weepy, melancholic, stressed, useless, unhappy and anxious. The friend I was chatting with doesn’t have kids, and somehow it was easier to admit all this to her than to friends raising their families with ease and grace. I know, I know, nothing is ever as it seems. But sometimes one goes to dark places and forgets that.
The other conversation was with someone whose kids are in college. I shared anxieties about my parenting, whether I was doing enough for the kids, if I had spent too many hours these last few years answering emails and adding to excel sheets, that I had missed some wondrous golden age of their childhood. My friend gently told me to not go down that road. That things found a way of untangling themselves and that ‘There’s always a small part of the kids that knows that you’re trying.’
So here’s to friends. Friends who know where to get sofas shampooed. Friends who can come over for a morning coffee after the kids have left for school so your inner martyr can complain bitterly about how much you do. Friends who tell you, you look great and friends who tell you, you look like a hooker at a pimp’s funeral. Ok. That last one is just my sister. Phone a friend today. You’ll be happier!