Someday We'll Call Them Slacks

We’re transplants to the city we live in.  In some ways it’s really liberating.  For one thing, no one knows about all the dumb crap I did in my younger years. They don’t know about the walks of shame, the 80’s nights at the college bar, or that really bad haircut my mom subjected me to in fourth grade.  Starting over in a new place sort of lets you re-invent yourself. 

On the other hand, there is something exceedingly lonely about being a transplant.  It’s hard when there’s no inside jokes, no reminders of the time ‘so and so did that’, or crazy memories from initiation nights back in the sorority.  Also, no one  knows how awesomely cool I was back in school….

Such a shame.

You can almost get a sense of how awesome I was from this picture...almost...

When you are a transplant, it’s important to make friends.  There’s a lot of blah blah blah psychology at play here.  Yeah, it’s important to have friends who can lift you up when you’re down, or help carry the burden when life slings crap your way, but beyond that you have to consider the fact that you’re going to need someone you can call to pick your kids up from school when you’re puking into the toilet and can’t pull yourself up off the floor from eating bad sushi.

Finding mom friends is more complicated than it sounds.  There are many points to consider.  I like to find friends who are slightly (or majorly) more organized than me.  This is because I suck at remembering when things like school programs fall, or field trips that require a sack lunch.  It’s even better if those friends recognize their superior organizational skills and take pity on me with text messages or emails to subtly remind of the junk they know I won’t remember.

But the reality is, a lot of moms I meet just aren’t friend material. Sometimes things look SO promising, and then she’ll say something so intensely shallow that I want to stab myself in the head with the nearest designer stiletto.

Not that there isn’t a place in the world for those kind of people….I mean, hey all God’s children right?  But let’s be honest, if you’re that type of mom you probably won’t be standing in line to make cake pops with me anyway.

Mostly I’ve realized that you can’t go looking for them.  You’ll find them when you’re supposed to.  And they won’t look the way you expect, and if you’re not careful you might judge them too quickly.  They’ll be totally different than your friends from high school and college, and in fact, if you’d met 15 years before, you might have despised each other. 

These aren’t the friends who knew you first, or who remember your 8^th birthday party, but that’s okay.  These are the friends who know you for the person you’ve become, and who help guide you through a phase of life that is frankly, sometimes pretty messy and chaotic. Most importantly, these are the friends who will someday cackle at a waffle house table with you, while you admire each other’s new slacks. 

Those are some slick slacks

 One thing is certain…. my mom friends are all better moms than me…and they make me want to be better too.