I made a real-life actual new friend this month. And I’m not talking about a book I resonate with, or a new drug for PMS, or some fabulous gal I trade blog commments with (though how I love you, kiss kiss.) No, I actually started hanging out with another mom from the school, someone who won’t ever know if I can spell or punctuate, but who will know when I forgot to brush my teeth. Somebody IRL.
So what, you say? Ha, if you have children, they must be toddlers plus or minus three years. Or you have superpowers of extroversion.
I complicated things for myself by moving every 18 months until I had a couple kids well anchored into elementary school. Then, while my husband worked the ridiculous long hours of the local economy, I was grateful and delighted for conversation with anyone about my height who wasn’t going to ask me for juice.
However, I wasn’t talking to my new friends about the books I read or my latest argument with God. We caught each other’s occasional rants and good news, but we didn’t share them in common. Not like you do with a friend, the way I had ever had a friend before. Really, what we had in common was still that we were about the same height and didn’t ask for juice. We were just at the same time and place.
And then the school year rolled over, the classes shuffled, and half of us didn’t see each other anymore. Our children took dislike of each other, took up new sports, or were of opposite gender, and more of us didn’t see each other anymore. And I had thought it was bad when the only adults I talked to were either connected to the toddler playgroup or didn’t mind me bringing a little kid to lunch.
Tearful, I called one of my true friends, a soul mate on the other side of the country whose children are ahead of mine, and asked her what the heck I could do.
These are the days of popcorn friends, she said.
It’s not just that Moms are busy. Grown-ups are busy. Remember when you were single and your friends married and disappeared? Figure out that you never would have become soulmates with that friend in college, if you weren’t both taking lunch in the dorm cafeteria Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 1:15?
Enjoy the popcorn. It’s light and good, enjoy it while it’s hot. Don’t be sad it will have to be a different batch tomorrow. Enjoy the people who are there.
If you like someone, get on a committee with her, plan an exercise schedule, hope your kids will be friends a while. Because, in general, you’re going to be just too darn busy to see her. Next year you’ll be driving to speech therapy while she’s driving to soccer. But there’s still hope for a bright new land where you have more times with friends of your choice.
Personally, I’m still crossing my fingers for high school.
Oh, to hearken back to the days where my sole and most vital concern was myself. I often wonder when I’ll be able to see a movie I want to see, or go to a play that has adult actors, or find a friend that has no association with my children.
I have very few friends that I would consider soul-mate friends. Too bad most of them are in different time-zones. This was a great explanation of our lives right now. High School is pretty soon, let’s keep hoping…
What a great way to put it: popcorn friends. It’s kind of sad, but true. Church friends are like that too, to a degree. You’re on a committee with someone, you see them all the time, and then the callings change, and you don’t hang out anymore. Or your visiting teachers change. You still see them at church, but you’re not in the buddy stage anymore… that’s how my life is anyway.
I’ve been thinking about this–but had never heard the phrase “popcorn friends”. I made some wonderful friends in different places, but only a few of them have made any effort to stay in contact. It makes me sad, but at the same time, I was still blessed to know the people I met.
I was thrilled to make a friend that connected with me in such a different way from children or sports class. I truly treasure her friendship.
My kids are at an international school and the parents seem to cling to one another out of loneliness and also the bewildering barrage of experiences in a foreign language. We share our “can you believe this?” stories with one another, laugh at the absurdities, give tips about where to shop, etc. But it never seems to progress beyond those stages. I like the idea of popcorn friends and their redeeming value.
Very insightful! Thanks for sharing. It seems that most of my friends now have their kids in school full-time, while I’m still touting around a 3 year old. Makes the spontaneous stuff harder to join in.
I lived in our last house for just short of two years. I made two friends and became close (in a casual, see each other periodically, not have to talk all the time kind of way). Before I moved we decided to all go out together and play. In order to remove any guilt/obligation, we did it on a week day after the kids were in bed. We left our husbands to relax and sleep and we headed to the nearest French restaurant. We ordered multiple desserts and cheese trays and funky specialty drinks. We laughed until the two recently pregnant ones among us almost literally peed their pants. We ran out of gas and closed the restaurant down and giggled like high-schoolers.
And of course, at the end of the night, we all thought, “Why didn’t we do this sooner?”
And now…faced with new acquaintances and a new home, I’m trying to remember how much I cherish even the small bits of time that I’ve had with my friends over the years. I’ll take Popcorn friends if that’s all I can get…