Motherhood isn’t always conducive to friendship. When I had a baby, some of my buds drifted away. They were unencumbered, still able to go out for fancy artisanal beverages at the drop of a hat, still in possession of unexpired lipsticks. I understood.
As my baby grew into a toddler and was joined by a sibling, other longtime friendships withered, even with some who were moms themselves. I watched my friends’ childrearing styles and felt judgy. Why did they tolerate cat-abusing behavior from their brood? Why did their precious darlings never say “please” or “thank you”? When had they become such narcissists? One friend cheerfully changed her baby on my dinner table, as I was setting up for brunch, chatting away. I thought: “You and your feces-on-my-bagel-surface spawn are never coming over here again.”
As my kids grew, still more friendships sputtered out like candles. My friends’ kids had nothing in common with my kids, family playdates felt like a chore, and in the whirl of school and work and clubs and activities and babysitter schedules, the effort to hang just didn’t seem worthwhile.
Granted, this isn’t so bad. We make new mom-friends. We see the old friends less often, catching snippets of their lives on Facebook and via email. It’s fine. But retaining an old friend through life changes and marital ebbs and flows and new familial additions and challenges? There’s something sacred about having a soulmate who’s known you BC and AD (Before Children and After Diapers). It’s a rare thing to have a true pal who has seen you at your worst, who has traveled a similar path, to whom you can bare your insecurities and feel loved and trusted and respected, and whom you love and trust and respect right back.
That’s me and my dear friend Gayle. We’d met each other pre-kids, when we were both kicky NYC teen magazine writers. I admired her adventurous spirit and punk-rock soul; she got a kick out of my snarkiness and the way it not-so-secretly covered my sentimentality—like bitter, salty chocolate over a gooey caramel center. We each found the other hilarious and thought the other was a good person in a world of mostly crappy people. I had a baby first; she was patient with me through the years of hallucination-inducing exhaustion and breast-feeding hurdles and work-life balance struggles. Then she got pregnant too. And I got pregnant again. And I couldn’t wait for us to be in the mama club together, with kids born only months apart.
Then one night, when I was hugely pregnant, my husband and toddler and I drove in a panic to my hometown of Providence, RI. My dad had fallen and was bleeding in his brain. I called Gayle. She didn’t call back. And I knew the only reason she wouldn’t call back was that she was having a baby right that very second. Which she was. Willa was born just as my dad was dying. While I’m sad that my dad never got to meet my second child, Maxine, the baby we named after him, I feel that in some mystical woo-woo way, Willa is a connection between him and my daughter.
Willa and Maxine adore each other. They’re now 11 and are great pals—they’re quirky, imaginative, and reading-obsessed girls. They’re funny in the goofy, scatological, wordplay-loving way my dad was funny. Gayle and I grin at each other in my kitchen or hers, as we listen to them spinning elaborate fantasy games in her living room or mine, mashing up Harry Potter, Greek mythology, “Star Wars,” Percy Jackson, and beyond. “You’re Hermione and I’m Princess Leia and the world is in danger…”
Many of us—me included—portray our lives on social media as joyful, hilarious, and warm, treated with the most gilded and flattering Instagram filter. But I never lie or elude or shoot through a Vaseline-smeared lens with Gayle. We’re real. When she had greater career success, I told her I was both happy for her and envious. When she had parenting difficulties, she poured out her heart to me and knew I still thought she rocked parenthood. Our long history together gave us a foundation, but our honesty about how freaking hard it is to be a parent, spouse, and human let us move into the future together. And maybe because we’re both writers, we know how to express ourselves truthfully even when it feels shameful and dangerous. I keep thinking about the last line in Charlotte’s Web: “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.”
Gayle is both.
Marjorie Ingall is a contributor to Tablet Magazine (the online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture) and an NYC mom of two. Her book Mamaleh Knows Best: What Jewish Mothers Do to Raise Successful, Creative, Empathetic, Independent Children (Harmony) comes out in August.
