A different kind of sorority

Postpartum motherhood is its own world, an us-against-them sorority that demands allies specific to the time and the place. But those years never come to a well-marked end, have no gowned ceremonies, no championship seasons. Instead, interests change, marriages return to normal, the urgency melts away. When preschool came, Claire and I picked different programs, with opposing schedules. I had a second child while she chose not to (how newly remote she already seemed the day she visited me in the maternity ward), and, as our boys' personalities emerged, their differences tempered their playdates. We still saw each other, but weeks went by in between.

I assumed Claire and her son would appear for Ezekiel's 6th birthday party, although the boys were virtually strangers to each other by then. I kept an eye on the door throughout the celebration. Later, after the binge of cake and toys, after the scramble to clean up, I would realize Claire hadn't even called to say she wasn't coming.

I felt all the truth of her absence: We didn't need each other anymore. Being friends now was a choice, and she was no longer choosing me. Claire's life had expanded, with room for other friends. Skipping a birthday party, like missing a wedding, signaled a sea change in two mothers' relationship.

The friendship had evaporated. I mourned her, reviewing our weeks, months, years together  -- the late-night confessions, the swim-lesson efforts with slippery babies, and our long afternoons alone with our sons. All of that belonged to another time that seemed not to exist anymore (in fact, Ezekiel remembers none of it). Once, I glimpsed Claire's profile at a concert, and heartache flooded me  -- the lost trips to the river, the lost months of new motherhood, the lost friend.

The other day, paging through a photo album with my boys, now 8 and 4, I stopped at a picture in bright blues, bright oranges. A little Ezekiel sat beside Claire's son, each shielded by a pumpkin bigger than his body. I'd forgotten that afternoon, the boys about 2, the comfortable mess across my kitchen table as Claire and I scooped out the pumpkins. We roasted the seeds for the boys to taste, and Claire deftly carved unusual silhouettes into the gourds. She was standing right beside me, so close, as I took that picture.

I can't think of those debut years as a mother without feeling Claire standing next to me. We shared every fear, triumph, new word, and next stage, and when I revisit those slow days, it's not Ezekiel's father but Claire who occupies that dreamy stop-time, embedded forever in the first memories of my son's life.

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