Girlfriends are crucial to a woman’s sanity, and if that woman is a mother, then I might go as far as to say that her very survival depends upon them.  The minute I moved from New York City to a small town, before I had unpacked boxes or purchased the dog I’d promised the kids, I started seeking out my new girlfriends.

In the past, I had been passive about making girlfriends, spending most of my time with women who I automatically saw

every day whether I liked them or not.  That’s how I became friends “by proximity” with Taggerty Bancroft, the mother of a child in my daughter Hannah’s preschool class in New York.  My husband labeled Taggerty a “front row” Mom because when the school secured a block of tickets to The Big Apple Circus, Taggerty and her family ended up ringside, due to not a small amount of finagling, persistence and outright aggression.

We were in the second row at the circus because I was a “second row” Mom.  Every day, I would arrive second to pick up my daughter from preschool.  Taggerty would already be standing in the hallway outside the classroom door wearing a brightly colored monogrammed sweater and pontificating.

Taggerty wore the Kelly green sweater with the navy monogram the day she announced, “I love The Fieldston School, but I don’t like the idea of my Kindergartener taking the bus.  Calhoun is too progressive, and Ethical Culture, well, that could be an option.”

Our children were three years old at the time.  Kindergarten had not appeared on my radar.  However, Taggerty’s front rowness got me thinking that maybe I was late.  Maybe I should be looking into private schools too.  If all of the other mothers were doing it for their kids, I didn’t want to demote myself to the third row.  And here’s the clincher:  under the guise of friendship, Taggerty offered to help me.  She gave me her application packet for The Calhoun School that was right behind us.  Literally.  If we opened our windows, we could hear the privileged Calhoun students whooping it up on the playground just like all the public school children three blocks further whooping it up for free. 

Taggerty offered advice about how to dress for an interview and how to write an admissions essay expounding upon Hannah’s academic attributes (as if she yet had any) to make my child a perfect candidate for the school Taggerty herself had ruled out.
Unfortunately, I’d overlooked one fundamental detail.  We were far, far away from the front row when it came to having the financial ability to send our children to private school.  I had fallen under the dark magic spell of a front row Mom, and I, a stay-at-home-Mother, ended up dressed up like a banker at a PreKindergarten interview at The Calhoun School.  When Hannah’s acceptance letter came, along with a pay schedule for $18,000, Taggerty’s spell was broken.  I realized that it might be in Hannah’s better interest if we spent that $18,000 on, say, food and shelter, and soon thereafter we left the city.  The irony was that Taggerty moved at around the same time to the suburbs, where she’d determined that the schools were better.

Friends “by proximity” like Taggerty Bancroft, who needed them?  In my more proactive moments in the city, I had made other friends “by availability”.  I learned from my experience with Taggerty that an advantage to making friends by availability was that I liked them.  Although my available friends did not automatically appear at parent pick-up, with a bit of planning they would materialize, usually at a coffee shop.   It made no difference whether these friends were married, single, executives or unemployed.  A working woman who prioritized a midday coffee with me had just as much potential for girlfriendship as a fellow stay-at-home-mom who was hungry (desperate really) for adult company and adult beverages.  (Let’s not rule out the stiff martini during a “coffee break.”)

My friend by availability Trudy, another Mom from the preschool, ran a food bank in the Bronx.  A do-gooder by profession, I secretly hoped that just being friends with Trudy would elevate my own do-gooder status a notch or two.  Sometimes, Trudy would arrive in a suit at a coffee shop, and we’d be joined by our mutual psychologist friend and fellow Mom Geraldine wearing beads and heels.  Beads and heels!  It made for such an elegant rendez vous amidst a day filled with diaper changes and little fingers smearing cream cheese on my nursing blouse.
Not to knock my stay-at-home Mom friends by availability who did not dress nearly so swanky.  If I called my friend Lydia at 8:30AM to meet me for coffee at 9:00AM, chances were she would show up.  With a baby sleeping in a stroller and with spit-up streaming down her back, maybe, but she’d show up!  Then we’d make a point of talking about everything except our children.  Lydia had earned a Ph.D. in architectural history, and she was like a walking gardening encyclopedia, so there was always lots to talk about.  Now that I live in an old house with dying peonies in my backyard garden, I wish I’d gleaned more knowledge from Lydia as we nursed our lattes and children.

When I moved three hours away from Trudy, Geraldine and Lydia, I couldn’t imagine how to maintain friendships by availability with women who weren’t within commuting distance of the local coffee shop.  I was determined to be less apathetic in my new town and cultivate a new variety of friend, the kind that surpassed proximity and availability. I decided to make friends “by chemistry” who would last beyond parent pick-up and delve deeper than the occasional coffee. 

Enter Zanne, who almost knocked me down outside of the school after dropping off the kids one morning and said, “Sorry for stepping on your dog.”  (Even a second row Mom does not renege on the dog promise.)   The opposite of monogrammed Taggerty, Zanne wore a red, faux fur jacket and matching lipstick in a region of the country where people took great pains not to stand out.  I interpreted this as a good sign.  I asked Zanne out for coffee, to which she responded, “We could go jogging instead.”

“I don’t jog,” I said.

“Neither do I,” said Zanne.  “But I plan to start tomorrow to burn off my thut.”  Zanne squeezed the area between her thigh and her butt that every girlfriend abhors, and she laughed maniacally with confidence that the thut didn’t stand a chance of survival.

“How about jogging the day after and having coffee with me tomorrow?” I said.

“That works,” said Zanne, and we made a date.

Then I watched Zanne disappear around the corner contemplating my own thut and if I should be doing something about it rather than proceeding with my original morning plan, which was to walk the dog home and read the local paper cover to cover while indulging in buttery scones.  Zanne was a potential friend by chemistry who made me think about productive things like getting motivated to burn off thut rather than unproductive things like getting my three year old into Yale.

After that coffee date, Zanne graduated from a friend by proximity to a friend by availability, and chemically we got along great.  But I began to ruminate.  Perhaps Zanne would make it past the girlfriend audition phase and join me in the deeper leagues of friendship.  Perhaps not.  Perhaps my friendships with Trudy, Geraldine and Lydia could progress long-distance if I made more of an effort to arise from my thut and venture into the city for coffee with Trudy, or invite Geraldine’s family for a visit, or call Lydia more frequently and grill her about my backyard garden.  My train of thought began speeding wildly off-track as I calculated all of the finagling, persistence and outright aggression it would take for me to achieve and maintain these friendships.  Then to my horror, I realized that I was strategizing about clawing my way into girlfriendships like a front row Mom angling for ringside seats at the circus.

Had I learned nothing from Taggerty Bancroft and the ridiculous costume I’d worn to get my child admitted into a private school I couldn’t afford?  A true girlfriend would welcome a phone call no matter how many years it was delinquent.  She would delight in a coffee date with me if ever I dropped into town, whether I’d showered or not.  She would not judge me if I couldn’t afford private school or I couldn’t keep a variegated hosta alive.  It dawned on me that what I was looking for was not a new kind of friend.   The acquaintances I had made by availability and even by proximity were just fine.  What I was looking for were the qualities of a comfortable old friend, something that I couldn’t achieve using front row tactics.

My daughter Hannah is now in fifth grade, and I am watching her make best friends overnight in our new town.  I am envious as I think of my best friend from grade school (who I really should call or at least email), and then I’m not.  My best friend from grade school has become a touchstone over time, and I wouldn’t want to be ten years old again and starting our friendship from scratch.  The thought of it is too exhausting, and in addition to fostering peer relationships, I have children to pick up from school and deliver to soccer practice and art class.  I have deadlines to meet, and there is thut to be jogged or at least walked off, which makes me appreciate another kind of friend altogether, the kind who is always in proximity, available, and there is a chemistry present that seduced me into taking him home in the first place.  I am not talking about my husband.

While people will tell you it is not a good idea to buy friends, I beg to differ.  Although my dog Otis may not do every single thing I ask of him (which is not a requirement for friendship anyway unless you want to be friends with my mother), a friend like Otis feeds the soul while I wait for my new girlfriendships to age like a vintage Bordeaux.  I’m just saying.