Just Say No!

A few weeks ago I went out to dinner with a group of women, half of whom I knew well and the other half of whom were recent acquaintances. Three of these women did not have children, and I realized something with a start as I looked around the table. These days, it is not so often that I spend much time with friends who don't have kids.

This is a mistake for many reasons, as was highlighted for me over the course of this evening, and as has become even more clear to me in subsequent weeks. Parenting young children can feel all-consuming. It almost always narrows the world of the parents, at least at first, when anxiety levels are high and the learning curve steep. And it throws parents together with other people who must spend time for the first time since childhood in playgrounds and ballet classes, preschools and swimming lessons: other parents.

But as I realize whenever I have a meal or even a conversation with my friends and relatives who do not have children, other parents are sometimes boring, quite often insufferable. It is all too easy to forget, apparently, that being a parent is not in and of itself of general interest, that one's children--even if known and loved by your companions--do not constitute a scintillating conversation by virtue of their sheer existence.

One of the women I was sitting next to at this dinner was a women I had met a few times before through a very close friend. I liked her the instant I met her, more so as the evening progressed. She is quick-witted, irreverent, widely read and traveled and an uninhibited daredevil who seems to speak her mind as a matter of course. She is also from my home state, and we have some superficial things in common that made it easy for us to feel familiar. I was pleased to see her again, pleased to be seated next to her.

When I asked her what she had been up to, she told me a really funny story about a recent trip she had taken that reminded me of a train ride I hadn't thought about in twenty years. I was about to start my story, when the woman across from us, who has two small children about the ages of my own, asked me a question about a school we are both interested in looking at for our older girls. I leaned forward, felt a familiar kind of tension flood my body. "Well," I began, but the woman next to me reached out and covered my mouth with her hand.

"No," she said. "I just can't do it tonight. I really like both of you, and I know you have other things to talk about besides kindergarten applications. Please." I felt my face grow hot. I saw the woman across from us color. I shook my head, mad at myself.

"You're right," I said. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too," the woman across from us added.

"Thank you," I said, and I meant it. And for the next hour and a half I had the best conversation about books that I've had in a very long time. It turned out that before we had kids, the woman across from me and I both used to be voracious readers. Now we are desperate readers, snatching moments late at night or on the subway back and forth to work. We spend way too much time cutting chicken breasts into tiny pieces and changing diapers. But that doesn't make it interesting.

I have been thinking of that gentle hand over my mouth since it happened. When I see this woman next, and I hope I do, I will thank her again. I can't be who I used to be if I let myself forget who she was.