Nearly all my friends for some years were also the mothers of my two sons’ friends. As my teenage son later remarked, “Mum, you wouldn’t have any friends if it weren’t for us” friendship
My friend Connie and I each have the same photograph of our sons making magic potions on my back verandah. They are about five years old, sitting at the old wooden table, their hair tousled, their expressions serious as they use eye-droppers to squeeze food colouring into tiny bottles of water – blue, red, yellow, green. A soft morning light makes their faces glow. A winged dragon sits on the table between them.
The making of friends does require some shared geography. Perhaps it’s that you live next door to each other, or you work or study together, creating a natural space for connection. The dropping off and picking up of kids provides that space for getting to know someone without having to take the risk of rebuff.
It doesn’t mean that all my friends have children. There’s Jane, for instance, and Miriam, both child-free, or at least without children of their own, and both now past child-bearing age.I met Jane when I was 16, the only friend I still have from my brief pre-motherhood years. We were romantic teenagers and the currency of our friendship, what mattered to us, was what was poetic, beautiful, remarkable.
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