Old Friends

I worry constantly about my children's friends. I work hard to mold their social lives. I organize playgroups, rsvp to birthday parties, and schedule playdates with kids they seem to be connecting with. Soon their social lives will spin out of my control and I'll be standing on the sidelines, hoping the foundation I've laid is strong enough.

I don't remember my preschool playmates my mother tells me about. I can't picture Raphael who stole his mother's gold bangles and gave them to me or the name of the little ballerina who pinched me so much I quit dancing forever. I can recall some grade school friends' names and faces: Frederique Brugnon with her short page boy haircut and her scary strict father, and Emmanuelle Weismueller with the beautiful country house where I spent a sunny spring weekend as a guest. They are just names on a program though; I have lost the substance of our friendship: what made us giggle and if we fought.

I've lost touch with most of my high school friends, but many of the details of our friendships are still vivid in my memory banks. I remember scaring Cathy Duffy and Daphne Dumbrille with my ambitious dreams. They wanted to get married and have children. I would condescendingly announce my intention to have both children and a big career. At fifteen, I had no doubt that I could have it all.

Now, at 35, I am indeed a mother as I planned, but I gave up my ambitious career when I had my second child. I wanted to be fully focused on raising my children. My life is full of new friends: neighbors, playgroup moms, my writing group, and my tennis partners. We commiserate about long nights fighting the croup, we coordinate car pools to dance class, and we even go out on joint date nights. We witness the daily struggles of our lives. I spend many of my waking hours with these women and they know me and my children very well, but they are not old friends.

Tonight I ate with my old friends, my college girlfriends. These women know me. They knew me before I was married, before I was a mother, before I had and then gave up my career. They knew me before I knew myself. We may not talk as regularly as we would like to, but when we come together we waste no time reconnecting.

When I show up as a mini-van driving New Jersey mom, but a little bit of the eighteen year old girl who used to dance like crazy to Abba also resurfaces. When I tell them about my latest news: this blog, my budding business, and the latest stories about the kids, they understand. They can put it in context. We crashed our first keg parties together, and shared our disappointment that a drunken hook-up would not turn into the relationship we had dreamed of. After college, we trickled into New York City one by one and crafted our adult personas together. We've met each other's spouses when they were just serious boyfriends and gave each other the reassurance that he was "the one". These girls know me through and through. They are my roots.

How strange that my children might have no memory of the friends they spend all of their time with today. They have not yet met their old friends and most likely won't for years.