My Friends Are My Child’s Friends’ Mothers

I had a surprise today, a visit with my old friend Leigh. I first met Leigh when her daughter Stokes was in the same pre-k class as Carter. Together Carter, Stokes and their friend Campbell would demand a three way play date. Happily their friendship precipitated my friendship with their mothers’ Hannah and Leigh.
With the names, Carter, Campbell and Stokes, I used to call them “a friendship, not a law firm.” Certainly when we first got the class list it was hard to tell how many boys and how many girls were in the class when so many people use last names as first these days. In those early years of sitting in the pre-school great room waiting for kids to be dismissed it really helped if your child picked friends who had parents you also liked. Not that there were many parents I did not like, but since our girls were our first children to go to this school were all kind of in the same place at the same time.
Shared experiences make up a lot of friendship in those early school years, for both mothers and children. And now thanks to the shared need to look at colleges we got a chance to see each other today. Even though Leigh moved first to California and then to Atlanta years ago, we can pick up right where we left off as if we have been sitting in the great room awaiting our girls to run out to us.
I am wondering when our children go off to college where the next gathering place to make friends will be? I just don’t tend to “be” anyplace, with nothing to do, long enough to make friends with people who are sharing an experience with me. Of course the retirement home is the end spot to make friends, but that is a long way off.
When I think about groups of people I am friends with, be it at Mah Jongg or at the stitching table at needlepoint, church, or garden club, but most of my friends have come through children. It has been easier to recognize someone who I might like by the way their children act than any other way. At Mah Jongg you might be a good player, which is good, but you don’t have to have a good sense of humor to play the game, which, to me, is not good in any situation. But if my child likes your child than chances are I am going to like you.
Thank goodness Carter liked Campbell and Stokes because it brought me Hannah and Leigh. Even though Leigh is not here most of the time we can pick right back up as if she has been. Our time with our children at home is coming to an end fast, but at least we still have our friends. Our time to make friends with our children’s friends parents is ending fast. I don’t think the same thing works with grandchildren, not that I am looking for those anytime soon.