May.27.01

When I made that toast (something I NEVER do) the other night at dinner with A. & A.M., I had no idea how prophetic it really was.

All I said was, "To Spring and change and new beginnings." How was I supposed to know that everything would feel so turned upside-down only a couple of days later?

And. & L. are having a baby. L. is pregnant. Of course, she's scared to death. She's afraid because of her age (36) the baby will turn out deformed or with Down's Syndrome. I don't think she has anything to worry about, but then I'm not a doctor...

I felt like the biggest jerk/heel/asshole for not being fully ecstatic with joy about And. and L. having a kid. I wanted to be, I swear. But I can't deny the tiny grain of envy that burned in me when they told us last night. Man, don't I suck.

When C. and I got home, I just couldn't get it out of my head, how much of a jerk I felt I was being. We talked about everything. He was great. He said all the right things, and really listened. I know that I want to do some things before we have kids, and it will just have to wait. C. feels the same way. He really wants to have kids, but we're just not quite ready. We want the time to be right, nothing wrong with that. I was thinking that L. and And. weren't planning to have kids yet and I was hoping we'd be doing this closer to the same time. I don't want to go through it alone, and since L. & And. got married at the same time we did, and we're closest with them, I figured we were on kind of the same timetable. But then again, L. is 11 years older than I, so she has a tighter schedule than I do, etc., etc., blah-blah. I need to remember that these things can't really be planned.

Anyway, I feel a lot better about the whole thing. I'm excited for them, and I don't feel envy.

Honestly, since L.'s kind of crazy, I think the only thing we can do is wish them only the best. That kid is going to have a hard enough time with its Mom, it doesn't need any other bad mojo...

What it comes down to is...I've been feeling really sensitive to what's been going on with my closest friends lately. It seems like everyone is going through some kind of amazingly dramatic change right now. So many of my friends are having/trying to have kids, and there are the friends who are struggling; my other friend who just lost her father; several friends approaching various turning points in their lives...I feel like I'm spreading myself a little bit thin, trying to "be there" for all of them. I always feel like I have to be the support system, the caretaker, the nurturer for them because I love 'em. Maybe I take it all too seriously, I don't know. I just want to be good to them. Otherwise, why be a friend at all, right?

square - hip