Some are silver and the others gold

Posted in Mom Stuff
by besttech

We sang this song as Girl Scouts about a million years ago:

“Make new friends, but keep the old,

One is silver and the other gold.”

Well, grab a pen. I’m rewriting it with a country western twist. Mine’s a song about friends stealing dreams and leaving me behind to drown in my frozen tears. La la la you were here and now you’ve left me and your life is cooler than mine. You get the wild adventures and the living-locally-off-the-land, and I’m left here all alone, in a sea of unfamiliar faces.

My old friends have left me. After years of playdates and book club and chick flicks and commiseration drinks, they are off. One took her family back to the farm, to don overalls and chew straw and milk cows and roll in hay. The other packed up the kids and the husband and they are now racing camels and flying magic carpets on their way to becoming multilingual citizens of the world. Or something like that.

They stole my growing-my-own-dinner, back-to-the-basics, multi-generational-home dream. They stole my raising-the-kids-on-exotic-shores dream. And they left me here, alone, in my suburban wonderland.

I’m not really mad at them. I just miss them dearly. But as the old song reminds us keeping the old friends is not the hard part. It’s the making of new that packs a wallop of emotions. A throwback to the insecurities of junior high. I may be standing outside the kindergarten instead of leaning awkwardly against my pea-green locker, but strange faces swirl around me. Are they rabid judges of my un-cool jeans? Will they callously mock my Madonna-wanna-be hair-do? Did I put the right kind of snack in my kid’s backpack?

This was tough enough in seventh grade, but I’m worried. My skills are rusty. But with little choice, I got back up on that friend-making bandwagon, and I was surprised at what I found up there. New friends. Friends that got me. Friends with a few minutes to share stories over coffee. Friends with band-aid application skills that my daughters trust.

And friends who, like me, see the value in breaking away from band-aid duty every once in a while to sit back and clink a well-deserved glass. Who knew that beneath that well-coiffed PTA exterior lurked the soul of party girl with a heart of tequila gold? And so it came to pass that a small group of new friends went out for a drink. Or twelve. And somewhere between the cabernets and the chardonnays these women lost that new-friend shimmer, and became, well, just friends.

I miss my old friends. But these new ones sure know how to kick back with the cosmos. And recently, when we overindulged (as we mama-types are wont to do) there was a sweet bartender willing to drive our wobbly, giggly selves home.

And I knew what had to be done. Because old or new, nothing says friendship like holding back your girlfriend’s hair in the backseat of a bartender’s car.

–By Daphne, ROCKY MOUNTAIN MOMS BLOG

———

This is an original post from the Rocky Mountain Moms Blog, http://www.rockymountainmomsblog.com. Daphne is trying to save the world, one canvas bag at a time. She chronicles the challenges of marching her family down the green path at her site, A Greener Biener (http://www.greenerbiener.com/). She is also a contributing writer for The Mama Bird Diaries (http://www.mamabirddiaries.com/).

———