Hello

There is a girl here in town that I keep on meeting. I first met her shortly after I had Baby J and our families were hiking on the same trail. We conversed briefly, but I felt an immediate connection, like – you know – I’d like to be friends with this person and family. No introductions were made and we went our ways. Within the next couple of months I saw her everywhere. The grocery store, the library, the local museum… our paths kept crossing, sometimes long enough to have our polite “I’ve seen you before, you’re a Mom like me, chit chat”, but not always. I remember thinking one time that I wish I had a little business card with my name and phone number on it to give her, maybe something cute like “I’m so and so’s Mom and would love to get together for a playdate at the park, call me!” I’ve done pretty bold introductions before, but it just never seemed to come up, it was almost like we knew each other too well at this point, and yet not well enough. Am I starting to sound like a freak to any of you, or do you have any idea what I’m talking about? It’s sort of like those other parents of the kids on your child’s sports team who you have sat beside all season, cheered on each others kids and had your little sideline conversations with and then the season is over and you just might miss one of them. Anyways, crazy or not, whatever you may think, I thought this girl (mother of three) and I seemed to have a lot in common and may have the potential to be good friends.

Our last “sighting” was several months ago, and I had completely forgotten about my would-be friend until I saw her today at McDonalds. The moment I did, I knew I was going to introduce myself and make our friendship official. Unfortunately there was no room for us to eat near her, so we ate on the complete other side totally out of view with no potential for a run-in. However, once my kids were done eating and the playland devoured, our paths crossed. Not only that, we had several conversations. And, I was right. We hit it right off, we have lots in common and we both liked each other’s company a lot. Our husbands are both PhD students except that hers just finished and they’ll be moving for their first job in August. With that news I decided that I didn’t want to have my friendship heart broken again this summer and decided to sever our almost-friendship right there. We agreed that it would be best that way. If we happen to run into each other in our small town this summer we will be more than happy to spend time together, but we’re not going to “try” to be friends. She has enough friends she’s sad about leaving as it is. So there you have it. We could have had a year together, but now we’ve just had moments and no names to attach them to. Should I meet another kindred spirit in the forest again, I think I may have to go home and make up my cute little business card.