Finding the balance

Last Wednesday while in Lansing, I ran into an old friend. One that I hadn’t talked to directly in ages. At least a year despite the fact that she only lives 10 miles from me.

I met her when my second child and her first child were in preschool together. She had two kids and I had four kids and we’d get together pretty regularly. We really got along and had a lot of fun together. But I started working full time and our kids went into first grade and we just never seemed to see each other anymore. And then there comes a time when it’s been so long since you’ve talked to her that you feel like an idiot calling her up and saying hi.

But last week we saw each other. And although she was the same fun person, I noticed immediately that she had changed. We were at a conference with hundreds of people and she was talking to them, but her hair was not the perfect version that I remembered. It was….flat. No curling had taken place that morning. And that was so unlike her. She’s a bit of a perfectionist. And I think one of the reasons we became such good friends is that we both saw traits that we wanted in the other.

I remember dropping by her house one day unexpected and her apologizing for how messy it was. There were a few lunch dishes on the table and lunch probably ended about a minute or so before I arrived. That was it. Everything else was in order and freshly dusted, vacuumed and polished. She was dressed and in full make up and hair. This, I assured her, was not a messy house. And how exactly does one keep a house so clean when you have three kids including a new baby?

There was one time she brought her two kids over to my house and her two boys and my four kids played and squealed and had fun and she was a bit amazed about how calm I stayed as the children jumped on my furniture, etc.

Fast forward to last week, and as we were catching up, she introduced me to someone she was with and she recalled THE incident. And in fact, she mentioned later that this particular incident was the one that she recalled upon seeing me.

She and I had gone to Traverse City and I was driving my minivan. I had my two little ones strapped into their carseats in the third-row seats, and my two older kids, weren’t with us. We were hungry, so we went to the McDonald’s drive-thru. I ordered the food and began passing it out. I think we had like five minutes to be somewhere and my children who normally would be sitting in the middle row and capable of passing the food back to the children in the third row were at school. So I was left with the dilema of how to get food to that third row seat.

So I pulled the cheeseburger out of the happy meal bag and tossed it back to Maxine, who caught it after it hit her in the face. Maxine was happy. I was happy. Kelly (my friend) was stunned. Jaw-dropping stunned. She couldn’t believe what she’d just witnessed.

So last week as we caught up and she introduced me to friends she was with and she recalled the incident and my burger tossing throw and the wrapped burger whizzing past heads in my van. As she recalled the incident, Kelly described what she would have done if it’d been her child in the back seat. She would have parked her vehicle and got out. She’d have spread a napkin out on the seat and asked her child if she wanted fries, and then fed her a few fries. And put the straw in the cup and just really catered to her child.

I tossed the burger back and went on with the drive.

Clearly, we have very different parenting styles.

Kelly said she admired me for that. Maybe not necessarily the hamburger throw, but for the ability to relax standards and enjoy the kids. And I’ve always admired Kelly for her skills too. She pays attention to details. The little details that can mean so much.

Anyway, I had to ask Kelly about her hair. She’s been busy, extremely busy. She’s active in her child’s school and has been to numerous conferences. She’s too busy to worry much about her hair, although she did have on make up and really, her hair, although straight, still looked very nice.

We’ve promised to get together soon. I hope we do. And it seems to me like our friendship allowed both of us to take steps to become a little bit more like the mother we wish we were, while still maintaining the best things about the mothers we are.

Although I don’t think Kelly will be tossing hamburgers anytime soon. And for that matter, my kids won’t see me spreading out napkins for them anytime soon either.