The Pandemic Gave Me a New Mom-Friend Model
From now on, my friendships come with a no-BS policy.
My husband has a theory that the isolation, anxiety, and other myriad horrors of 2020–21 led me to create an imaginary friend. This woman is a mom of little kids, like me, has flexible work hours, like me, and does her best future-world-domination thinking while taking long walks, like me. She also managed to materialize in my life at a time when much of our country was locked down and making new friends seemed about as far-fetched as getting my kids to pay attention to more than 10 minutes of Zoom school.
Fortunately for me, this mom is real. She’s actually someone I knew before the pandemic but who fell more into the “friendly acquaintance” category. Our kids go to different schools and we share some mutual friends but we didn’t bump into each other all that often. I can’t remember who reached out first to take our initial neighborhood stroll in the early days of COVID (we live very close to one another), but spending time with her one-on-one revealed right away how similar we are, how many interests we share, and just generally how well we get along. That stroll led to many more, plus a lot of texts in between.
I think one of the most refreshing things about a friendship formed amid global uncertainty was the complete absence of “small talk” or attempts to pretend we were both fine or that our families weren’t in total chaos at home every single day. Every meetup with this friend cut right to the chase, and began with some version of, “You’ll never believe what happened,” or, “I’m losing my mind,” or, “I barely made it out the door this morning and don’t know if my kids will be alive by the time I get back.”
In their own unique ways, many of my other friends helped me through some very dark, anxious moments this past year, and those relationships are far from superficial. But with this newer friend, “real talk” was the starting point of our friendship, the remarkably honest baseline.
As vaccination rates keep increasing and the doors to greater normalcy are opening, I’m making a shortlist of resolutions I hope to take with me into post-pandemic life. One is to remember that there’s a happy medium between the prison-like feeling of shelter-in-place and the nonstop, activity-crammed existence we were leading before. (Another is to write every teacher who dealt with my kids this past year into my will.)
On the friendship front, I’m using my pandemic pal as a model for how friendships should be even when we aren’t in crisis mode. I like to think of it as a “BS-free zone.” There’s a time for small talk and a time for keeping your true feelings, concerns, and experiences close to the vest, but that time is not when you’re with your real friends. Being a mom is challenging and time-consuming enough — we don’t have the bandwidth for relationships that never get below the surface.
Some friendships burn bright for a season of life and then fade out. There’s a chance my pandemic mom friend is one of those, but I don’t think so. What we revealed about ourselves was real, with deep roots, and those things won’t be changing now that we’re getting back to more of our old routines.
This friend had a birthday recently, and I texted her that our friendship was one of the bright spots in a very strange year. Just like everything I’ve shared with her these past months, it’s the unvarnished truth. Now we just need our husbands to meet.
