I was sent this little video by an old friend a little while ago and it really sums up friendship nicely.
I think so many of us can relate to this in the way of friendships coming and going over the years. We've had best friends we couldn't wait to have kids at the same time with - until we did and discovered that we have completely different parenting styles. There is no way to describe the feeling of watching a dear friend's child whack your own over the head with a toy and then laugh about it. Or watch her hit her own child, or whatever else it may be that just does not sit well. Women are complicated and small things hit us hard. Our husbands might look at us confused and just brush it off- but it can stay with us for days when something happens. I remember when I was extremely strict in my eating and went to a baby shower for a friend who ate artificially dyed frosting on a Costco cake while pregnant. I actually cried on the way home because I couldn't believe someone that I knew and loved would 'do that' to her unborn child. Luckily, I have since moved on from that level of fanaticism but I still feel the same on the hitting thing and yelling at kids.
Sometimes it's hard to find our tribe in our local friends- particularly if we're in a small town- and that's the beauty of this whole blogging world. Sometimes we can feel closer to someone who is 2000 miles away than someone we've been friends with for 20 years. I loved the line in the video about those women who leave our lives and sometimes come back in and we remember both why we were friends and why they left. That is so true. Sometimes we outgrow friendships. And then we make room in our lives for new ones.
So, a bloggy friend I made about 6 months ago or so has two daughters the same age as mine, also a home/un/waldorfy kind of schooler and we've enjoyed emailing each other and peaking into each other's blogs. Here's where the universe really shows its sense of humor- a few weeks ago she mentioned something about doula training in Phoenix years ago and next thing you know through a flurry of emails we realize we were actually partners for vaginal exams in doula training 10 years ago!!!! Yup, she's been up in my privates with a latex glove before either of us ever had kids. She had her period at the time so got out of having being prodded by an amateur. This just goes to show how small the world is - she's in PA and I'm somewhere between AZ and CA, on my way to somewhere else and still our lives intersected once again. She's moving to Mexico soon and we hope to visit while they're all down there. So, here's to gal pals, both new and old
