I wasn't planning to make a friend the day I met Claire.* From the mess of my kitchen, I'd read the newspaper notice of a playgroup at the library for new mothers and babies. I looked over at Ezekiel as he dropped slices of warm zucchini over the edge of his high chair. I grabbed him, got us dressed, and headed out of the house.

In the basement of the local library, the mothers sat on carpet squares in tidy clusters as the toddlers circled the board books and toys, bumping into each other and down onto their bottoms. Another little boy was dressed like Ezekiel in striped overalls and hiking boots, and I looked around for the woman who had chosen the same outfit as I had. She met my eye, and we smiled tired hellos.

A few days after that, Claire and I shared a blustery picnic at a nearby playground. As the boys churned sand through their fists, we got to know each other. It seemed like months since I had talked, really talked, with another woman. We admitted to each other how weary we were in this strange life of parenting, how little we felt in control or convinced of what we were doing, how much frustration and repetition we endured amid this utter, fierce love. It was one of those urgent confidences, one of those seized moments you worry you'll miss. I needed a friend, and so did she.

Claire and I became inseparable. In the mornings, we'd call to plan where to meet, figure out whose house had better leftovers. On my birthday, she showed up with a cake, the day's only moment that wasn't about my baby. When she needed a nap, I'd take her boy. Living a few streets apart, we roamed our neighborhood, the strollers side by side. We revealed every private thought: on our marriages, our fears of not being good enough mothers, not always liking our new sons, our dismal sex lives, our absent parents.

Our lives were entirely about the now, and I shared that now with Claire. When my husband came home in the evenings, I was too tired to talk and passed the baby off and closed the bathroom door for a while. Claire knew, Claire understood. When one of us took her baby for shots, she called the other. When one of us started crying without reason in the fabric shop, the other was there in the store. Life became bearable and, bit by bit, better.

Susanna Sonnenberg is a columnist for the Montana Missoulian.

* name has been changed.

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