Kidless

For convenience with our work and social schedules for this weekend, my husband and I dropped our kids off with my parents on Friday night. We tucked them into bed before the fireworks started and then drove home as kidless parents.

We've been without our kids before. Several times. We've even left the country without them in tow. But there was something so utterly lonely about getting back to our house that night and not having any sleeping children to unbuckle and carry in.

And rather than sleeping late the next morning and enjoying the rare silence of a kid free house, I found myself rather depressed about the whole thing. I went to the grocery store without having anyone to help me push the carriage or begging to play with the car keys or my sunglasses. I stopped at a gas station and didn't have voices chirping from the backseat the car is huuungry and there were no moon faces smiling at my through the back windshield as I pumped.

Rather than accomplishing great things with all that freedom I had, I was bored, fell asleep on top of my blankets and woke up still a little sad to be alone.

We went childless to a cook-out last night. It was nice to not be chasing after mischievous little ones and to not have to accommodate bed times and picky appetites. But still, I missed them. A couple of our friends brought their adorable 9-month old with them. She was cherubic and well behaved, with only one minor scream-fest.

During those few minutes of fussiness, a younger woman walked through the house, passing us on her way to the kitchen. She said, as a joke I can only presume, Now there's birth control - to no one in particular.

(Rude, much?)

This got my friend (the mother of the beautiful baby girl) and I talking about how it is impossible to put into words how having a child changes you, changes your perception of the world, of others, of life, of yourself.

Before having children, would I have been so different in thinking that a squirming, screaming, teething baby was a nuisance and a downer at a party? Yet now, my heart strings were pulled and I felt nothing but motherly compassion for the poor baby and empathy for the mother attempting to soothe her.

The world is different after having kids. You know, my friend said, I actually feel a little sad for my husband and I before we had our daughter - how we didn't even know what we were missing out on.

It's a strange way to put it, but I feel the same way. Coming home with only my husband on that Friday night felt, well, empty. And though having children has easily been the most challenging (and frustrating and exhausting) thing I could have ever imagined - it's easily the best thing ever we've ever done. We laugh more now than before we had kids (which I never would have thought possible) - I've written more (and better) since having kids - I've earned my master's and done all of my publishing since they were born.

And though I often come here to vent about them being distractions to my writing process, the truth is they're my inspiration.

And so last night, I felt a little sad for that woman who made the comment when she heard the baby crying. That there's this whole huge world that's not yet visible to her. Of course, I'm not saying that having children is the key to opening one's eyes to a greater awareness or that giving birth somehow unlocks the door to a land of great understanding.

But, I know I have been changed by motherhood. In all good ways. And for that, I am thankful.

Peter Pan and I

We were friends in the quiet places. On starlit sidewalks and on swing sets, beneath the halo of streetlights and beside the shushing of the ocean. We were midnight friends, two am, four am, friends. Anytime and on either side of the ocean, friends.

We were friends in the loud, unbearable way. The way reserved for siblings or those you've allowed to become close as such. Boisterous and obnoxious, silly and endearing. Tears, lice, twenty-seven hour train rides, trans-Atlantic plane rides, professions of love, or not. We were our best and worst with each other, never once fearing that the other would leave.

He was married on Sunday. And it was beautiful.

Another for the List

I stood at her door, wearing saggy pajama bottoms and an oversized men's t-shirt, barefoot on the cold linoleum, in the dark. Waiting. Got chocolate? I asked when the door finally cracked open. She grinned and lifted a pillowcase filled with Halloween loot.

We were college freshmen living on the same floor of an all girls dormitory. At first, I would pass her in the morning bathroom rush - we'd nod and smile with towel turbans on our heads and toothbrushes poking into our cheeks. For all of our passing and nodding and smiling - it took my insatiable need for a peanut butter cup at midnight to bring us together. We sat in her room for hours that night, until her roommate kicked us out in search of sleep. At which point, we slunk out to the hallway and sat on the hard floor with our backs pressed against the cool concrete walls.

We spent most of that year up late, talking. We talked on long walks or while stitching designs on thrift-store pants and eating microwaved potatoes dowsed in salt and vinegar. We talked about anything. Growing up. Families. Home. Why we were there. Where we wanted to wind up. Everything unfolded effortlessly between us over plates of potatoes. Later, in letters from home, she would refer to us as soul sisters.

She is the latest one that I've lost. We haven't spoken or written in over a year, and I'm not even sure how to contact her. She has vanished.

And she's just the latest in a growing list of people who have wandered deeply into my life, only to disappear. There's the boy who sat with me in our cafe, sipping coffee, reading scripts and planning how we'd spend our lives together, playing here and there - never settling down. There's the adolescent flirtation that grew to an intense friendship and then became my last kiss, just two weeks before meeting my husband. There are too many; the list is long.

Sometimes I sense them slipping and I simply let them go. Perhaps that makes me to blame: I don't fight for my friendships. I welcome them, I love them, I listen and share and I wait to be needed. But, I don't poke or prod them like a fire needing to be stoked. I let them evolve, as they inevitably will.

And I cherish the ones that remain.