self-portrait, Siesta Key, SarasotaCanon Digital Rebel XTi

I’ve been reading and loving my friend SARK’s new book called The Fabulous Friendship Festival. It is truly wonderful book and just became a national bestseller. Go SARK! It came out at the perfect time for me, just as I’ve been contemplating friendship in my own life.

I’ve been in an interesting place with this lately, noticing for the first time that I have indeed moved to a new town (Berkeley from SF) and even more importantly, from pregnancy to motherhood. I didn’t realize I would spend so much time by myself at home, or that most of my friendship time would be on the phone. I imagined that I would be one of those moms that cruised all over town, into the city and back, to gallery openings and street fairs, to concerts and dinner parties.

And alas, we are all too tired to go anywhere at night, and during the day, my life is now ruled by THE NAP.

It was so easy to judge when I wasn’t there myself. I vowed to never be the parent that couldn’t go anywhere or could only stay for 5 minutes because THE NAP was looming… I rolled my eyes at how uptight that seemed. “I’m going to take that baby everywhere!” I’d say to myself.

Ha! We were at a fantastic barbecue the other day and I mentioned to Matt several times that we probably needed to scoot soon. He was having a great conversation with our friend’s mother about his Rebar projects and she was finding him/them fascinating. When Ben started to finally meltdown, I walked out there again and said, “If you want to go home with someone else you can!”

I get a little crazy when I hear that baby cry.

What does all this have to do with friendship? It means that since nights are out and my friends work during the day, the only folks I occasionally see are new mom friends that live in my neighborhood. I am lucky to have found truly wonderful new pals… they are fun and likeminded and we can talk shop about babies until the cows come home. I look forward to going deeper with these friends.

And yet, I miss my dear ones. I feel like I’m in junior high and just moved to a brand new school, all awkward and gangly and insecure. In lots of ways I have. Motherhood is a place it turns out, and right now it seems far away from my old life. Little adventures that used to be easy, like going to Glide for example, seem so complicated now.

I’m not complaining when I share this. Please don’t get me wrong. I very much WANT to be here. I’m simply noticing that on so many levels, my life is new. I am still transitioning and trying to figure out what I can keep from that old life, what is worth fighting for and what I can let go of and embrace about what is happening now.

I’ve been in a funny kind of isolation. You might have even noticed out there in blogland. Motherhood is new and I still feel like a brand new pony with it. All legs and wobbles and no grace.

I’m curious about what you wise ones have learned about all this.