You know what was quite nice about this week? There was a colleague, whom I knew on a professional level but never really got to know outside the office, who turns out, now, to be one of the few friends I can keep post-partum.

It’s hard to keep friends who are child-free, once you’ve slipped into the black-hole, confusion-engendering, timesucking, energy-draining, silly, bottomless energy pit that is parenting. After kids you have nothing to give, and you’re boring. And it’s even harder to keep friends whose parenting styles go against everything you believe. No use being friends with someone whose kids you feel the need to raise on your own (to spare them the psychic damage and all that.)

PhDinParenting posted an entry a while back (can’t find it, but here’s a link to her post about the kind of mom she wants to be: the kind who makes me cower at my glaring parental flaws) about whether it’s possible to be friends with someone who has a different parenting style. She was gracious and open-minded, and eventually said, (paraphrasing) ‘yes, but not really.’

Well, I’m not nearly as nuanced or polite as PhDiP. I absolutely cannot befriend people whose parenting styles are wildly different from my own. It’s way too stressful to respect someone whose ideas you don’t respect.

So imagine my happiness to reconnect with this colleague whose perspective and approaches I totally groove on. It’s quite lovely to not shoehorn a new friend with similar views or an old friend with disparate views into my life.  Glad we found you, KBG! (by the way, it would be really extra cool if you could change that to KGB. Way more international mom of mystery that way.)

(Note: the title of this post is code. I can’t stand that color. Makes me all shudderingly caffeinated and nauseated.)