Dear Mom Friend
A quick run-through of some things that have been on my mind lately, to the women who always get it.
Dear Mom Friend,
Have you ever had an innocuous moment stab you directly in the heart? Just now I was leaving the library behind a mom and her two kids when the younger one, a maybe 3-year-old boy, reached up to take his mom’s hand at the exact moment she reached down to him. It’s impossible to describe how ancient and elemental this moment felt, but I know you get it. Now I’m crying in my car listening to Hold My Hand by Lady Gaga. This song has absolutely nothing to do with what I just witnessed, but my brain is very literal these days and I am overcome.
How often is it appropriate to cry?
Your friend, now listening to Gaga’s newest album and deciding it’s not that great -
~ Mom
Dear Mom Friend,
Speaking of stabbing, I think Google Photos is actually trying to murder me. This afternoon I was served up a video from five and a half years ago of my then two-year-old daughter pretending to take a phone call from the TV remote. Her little voice…her cheeks…my second daughter in my belly…we’re at the start of it all. Is it better to have the videos if they make us feel like we’re going to barf from bittersweet sadness, or would it be easier to not remember?
Can I contact you about joining my class action lawsuit against technology/time?
Your friend, always bleeding internally -
~ Mom
Dear Mom Friend,
Yesterday I picked up my five-year-old and carried her for a block. She’s heavy but can support herself against me. She’s big but still squishy. She melted into me and kissed me on the cheek the way she would when I sang her lullabies as a baby. I can’t go on. My feet have sunk down into the sidewalk and I’m rooted to this spot forever. I won’t need Google Photos for this one.
Anyway, do you have lower back pain too?
Your friend, googling Han Solo frozen in carbonite but real life -
~ Mom
Dear Mom Friend,
A few weeks ago I had one of those periodic (pun fully intended) cravings to have another child. Moments like the ones above accumulate in my bloodstream until they reach capacity and it seems the only way to purge them is to start the process all over again. Let’s go back to the Island of Babies and pick up just one more! We won’t, but let’s just pretend.
Join me in this delusion?
Your friend, masochistic and probably just ovulating -
~ Mom
Dear Mom Friend,
Do you know what will cure you of your baby-craving? Having dinner in a crowded restaurant with six (insane! how are they all so insane!?) children. I’m all good now.
Are the kids OK?!?!? Like, truly: what is wrong with them?
Your friend, mouthing what the fuck to her husband across the table -
~ Mom
Dear Mom Friend,
My daughter read me a National Geographic book last night and I learned that the Earth’s crust is constantly moving under our feet. That knowledge makes me panic a bit. We’re (1) hurtling through space, (2) while spinning around—but not in a whimsical way, in a barfing-off-the-side-of-a-Tilt-a-Whirl way, (3) while ALSO pinned by an invisible force to the Earth’s crust, (4) a crust which is, no big deal, “constantly shifting.” This—not to mention the unrelenting passage of time, see above—is entirely too many forces occurring at once on my one body. This feels extremely tenuous.
How many existential crises have you had in the past week? (And are you craving pizza now too? All this talk of crust!)
Your friend, keeping very still for the moment -
~ Mom
