I read Lori’s blog from yesterday and I found myself wanting to get up and do the Told You So Dance. Well, that’s not entirely true. But I did chuckle a bit and have a Told You So Smirk on my face. I know, I know…that’s completely childish of me and a horrible thing to do to a friend. Especially when she’s being all honest with her feelings. But I can’t help myself. I love being right (and I’m pretty sure Lori would do the same thing if the roles were reversed).

For a while, I’ve been telling my husband that the black hole of motherhood is about to suck in Lori, especially now that she’s gone back to work. There’s just no possible way to raise kids, maintain a marriage, go to work, take care of yourself, and sustain friendships all the course of one lifetime (and maybe not even two). At least not if you do all that and expect to get the fullest amount of pleasure from each experience. I knew that when Lori had a baby, the actual amount of time we saw each other would be less. And while that bites, it’s understandable. She’s not being a bad friend, she’s being a good mother. If I can’t appreciate the difference, then I really would be a horrible friend.

But the funny thing is, that with my childfree friends (CFFs), we don’t have much time for each other either. Certainly not any more than my friends with kids (FWKs) and I have time for each other. My CFFs may have more flexibility when it comes to when and where our get togethers go down, but they are just as busy (if not more so) as my FWKs…just in a different way.

So when it comes to friendships, for me it’s not about the quantity of time either side devotes, it’s about quality. And for most FWKs, that’s where it all falls apart. Their world becomes so narrowly defined: all things kids. And while that may seem like a never-ending topic of discussion, that’s the problem—for within that small scope, the details become enormous. A phone conversation with an old college friend of mine that I hadn’t spoken to in over a year involved the first 20-minutes talking about her 6-month-old daughter’s poop. She spent another 10 minutes on the chapped nipple dilemma (hers, not mine or her daughter’s). The call was only 35-minutes long. It’s the details that kill my friendships with FWKs. Our interactions end up smothered. Like a cheese pizza with way too much cheese, it goes from being a classic to over-the-top. Quality versus quantity.

If there ever comes a time where Lori talks about Matteo’s poop for 20-minutes, I really will do the Told You So Dance. And in front of her. Twice. There’s only so much a CFF can take. I won’t be disappointed if Lori can’t find the time for our friendship. But I will be disappointed if she loses perspective of it. If the roles were reversed, I know she’d call me on it too.

On Wednesday, while Lori was returning to work for the first time in several months, I got to go hiking with my friend, Jackie, who is childfree and also taking some time away from Corporate America. At first, I felt a bit odd hanging out with Jackie, like I was cheating on Lori by suddenly filling my Tuesdays with M-Lori with someone else. The ink wasn’t even dry on our separation papers, so to speak, and I was out with another woman. What kind of friend was I? And then, to make being a bad friend even worse, I called Lori at work to rub it in. “Dude, guess what I’m looking at right now,” I demanded when she answered the phone.

“Are you looking at the Pacific Ocean? I hate you,” Lori replied in the most loving way.

“Sucks to be you,” I said behind a grin that spread from ear to ear. In my defense, the ocean has a way of doing that people—turning them into obnoxiously gloating friends.

That morning, any thoughts of betraying Lori soon dissipated with the hug Jackie and I greeted each other with. I had a blast with Jackie. She’s a great hiking partner, a great storyteller, and an absolute dear. We have another hiking day planned next week.

So with the end of Tuesdays with M-Lori begins weekday adventures with other people—hiking with Jackie, museum hopping with my recently retired neighbor, going to collage class at the Arts Center in Pasadena. Interacting with people with similar interests. Isn’t that how friendships are made?

I ask this because I can’t stop thinking about a comment left by one of our readers, Little Liz, last week. Responding to our guest writer’s blog, she wrote:

And, the part you don’t know, the part I didn’t know until James started school is that motherhood is a sisterhood. I have met and developed friendships with the most amazing women from all walks of life, and it all started because we had kids the same age. Being a mother is as uniquely “woman” as having cramps. Tim can be the best father in the world, but he’s still not a mother. The women I have met on this journey are my “sistahs…”

I was fascinated by this observation and couldn’t help but think about my relationships with my childfree friends to see if the same sisterhood feeling applied. In other words, do childfree women feel a special bond with one another because they are childfree?

After thinking about it for a while I’m going to say that I don’t think so. Generally speaking, our lives are not defined by our procreation habits the way the lives of women with children are. If done right, having kids means raising them IS your life. For childfree women, our lives are however we define them, which is different for each woman. So when we come together, we do so because of a common interest in something, not because of a similar (or exact) lifestyle. I don’t feel my childfree friends are my “sistahs” just because we’re childfree. And I’m not inclined to pursue a friendship with someone just because they are childfree. I may give them extra-cool bonus points upon meeting them, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to an undying friendship.

I found it most touching to read Little Liz’s declaration of closeness to her mommy friends. Even a bit of jealousy touched my heart knowing that there is a type of friendship that was unique to women with children…and that was something I was walking away from. There was also a HUGE part of me that was so happy for that special connection, since being a mom is tough job (to say the least), undervalued and underappreciated in the vast majority of places in the world. I’m a big fan of doing whatever it takes to support another set of ovaries (go  Hillary!), even if the owner of those ovaries has a need for them in a way that I don’t. Thanks to Little Liz’s comments, I’ve now become an admirer of mommy friendships. They are more than beautiful. They are a necessity! My hope for Lori is that she discovers (and enjoys) this new type of friendship now available to her. They won’t be as cool as the one she has with me, but they’ll be lovely in their own way.

But unlike Little Liz, “sistah,” for me, is something that is earned. You don’t become or not become my “sistah” because you did or did not choose to have children. Even though I’ll be hanging out with Jackie more and even though she’s childfree, I wouldn’t necessarily call her my “sistah.” At least, not just yet. I haven’t given her the chance to break the “get to know the real Barb” barrier. But maybe in time I will.

For now, I’m thrilled to have the “sistahs” that I do have…some are married, some are single, some have kids, some don’t, some are voting for Barack, none are voting for McCain, some like wine, some like travel, some read, some love to cook. They are different in so many ways, but they all have one thing in common: my love.

Savoring the moment. That’s all I’m doing right now. That’s all I can do, now that it’s over and done with. The last bell has sounded. The fat lady has sung. Game over. Thanks for playing.

Yesterday was the last Tuesday with M-Lori. Tomorrow, Lori returns to her corporate job, Matteo heads to day care, and I’m going on a hike with my friend Jackie (who is also childfree and proactively unemployed at the moment). But who wants to think about tomorrow right now? Not me. Let’s get back to yesterday.

I called it Surprise Day, something I’ve only done for my husband before. I planned a full day of activities without letting Lori know what we were doing. I told her what to wear and what time I was going to pick her up. But that was it. And then I let the day unfold before her, step by step, one minute at a time. I figured the rest of her life pretty much is predictable from this point forward (as predictable as it can be when kids are involved) so why not have a little last-minute mystery adventure to shake things up a bit before she enters her next phase: working mother.

Oh, how much fun it was! Just the two of us. The sun was shining bright. The lovely coastal town of Santa Barbara (no pun intended) was the backdrop to our day. Talk was incessant. Laughing constant. Shopping truly was retail therapy. Food and drink were involved. Of course. I told her we’d be back by 8 p.m. It was 9:30 p.m. when I finally dropped her off at her house. Tired. Exhausted. Full.

It is a rare opportunity to be able to spend time with a friend like I have the past three, almost four, months. Life is busy for all of us, childfree and otherwise. And it takes a lot of work to foster ongoing relationships with others. A lot. Especially because I don’t want just a lunch date or a museum buddy. I want a friend who will have lunch or check out a museum with me. And because it’s me. So I will continue to make time, create space, for those people who feed my soul. Or at least make me laugh.

I am fortunate to be living the life I have imagined, designed, and worked toward. Nothing has been handed to me, but I won’t say Luck hasn’t dipped her toe in my pool every once in a while. Through a chance encounter, I am lucky to have met Lori. One second either side of time would have made a world of difference. And I am lucky that Lori chose to have children. It gave us Tuesdays with M-Lori. And something for the memory books.

Let the next chapter begin.

I’ve known Nicole (yesterday’s guest writer), or “Nic” as I call her, for a little longer than I’ve known Lori. Nic and I rode the train to work together. Actually, we rode the commuter bus that took us from the train station to our office. But that 20-minute ride turned into a few lunches which turned into a few Happy Hours which turned into a few day-long outings (remember that poolside afternoon, Nic?) which turned into the friendship we have today. Besides working for the same company, the main connection that drew us to one another was our passion for writing. The fact that she was childfree was bonus.

But of the three of us—Lori, Nic, and me—Nic is the youngest by physical number (Lori mentally the youngest, of course!). She also doesn’t hail from the Midwest like Lori and I do, where you plow through life, head down and constantly moving forward because if you stop and think about it you may end up caught in a big-ass blizzard. She’s a native Southern California girl, ebbing and flowing through life like a surfer on the ocean swells. And those two factors, youth and culture, always made me think that Nic would lean toward having babies despite being on the fence. This didn’t change the way I developed my friendship with her. I still pursued chances to get together and hang out. I still embraced the chance to go beyond “colleague” and move toward “good friend.” I still opened up to her, fully and completely exposed. Like with Lori, I didn’t expect our friendship to grow so strong. Like with Lori, I figured I’d deal with Nic becoming a “friend with kids” when it came along.

But obviously, Nic did become one of my dear, close friends. Beyond writing, our enthusiasm for travel, new ideas, creativity, discovering ourselves as strong women, our cats, our men, our reading lists, India, cooking, and so much more bound us and kept our hearts beating closely with one another. Her becoming a “friend with kids” would definitely impact me much the same way it does/has with Lori. So I can’t say that I wasn’t secretly pleased, for selfish reasons, to read her guest blog yesterday. As Lori observed, it appears that Nic is leaning more toward the childfree lifestyle. But who knows what will happen. So much has changed in Nic’s life from the first time I met her. So, so much, both in situation and in person. And through these changes, I’ve seen her step into her strength more often, step into and out of her comfort zones more easily, step out and look back more comfortably. Whatever she decides whenever she does, it will be a decision made by a woman fully cognizant of its impact and willing to embrace the outcome. And I’ll be there to see it all happen.

As I’ve mentioned before, the purpose of Dually Noted isn’t to advocate for one lifestyle over the other. Both Lori and I couldn’t care less which one people choose. We’re not here to help people figure it out either. It’s a decision that is so personal and so personally specific, there can be no blueprint for it. But Dually Noted is a place to see how that decision impacts lives, especially our friendships. For me, having such close friends, the three of us and our three decisions—to breed, not to breed, and in between breeding—and then be a part of all that other stuff in life that has nothing to do with kids, makes me wonder where we’ll all be in a year, five years, 20 years from now. Will we look back at this time in our lives and see it as The Great Turning Point? Will The Decision stagnate my friendship with Lori? Will The Decision make my friendship with Nic stronger? And how will the friendship between Lori and Nic, the original twosome, unfold?

Only time, and decisions, will tell. I just hope I don’t lose both of them to their kids. I hope I don’t quietly (or not so quietly) exit the picture and become a footnote in their history. It would be nice if there was a “20 years from now” to look back upon, with or without The Great Turning Point and despite The Decision.

And if not, well, we’ll always have Dually Noted.

Gosh, after reading Lori’s blog from yesterday, I’m starting to feel a bit depressed about her going back to work. And not even for me (though there’s a huge component of that in there too), but for her. This is the one thing I know is going to make such a huge impact on her quality of life (and our friendship)…going back to work. Not only does she have to juggle raising a kid and a husband, keeping socially engaged, managing the household, and continuing to feed her creative side, she now has to spend 1/3 (and then some) of her day somewhere, and doing something, that isn’t all those other things. Seriously, there’s not enough time for all of it. Something is going to give.

Today Lori emailed me to suggest we not do tomorrow’s Tuesdays with M-Lori. She said she has a lot on her plate and is under a time crunch. And I don’t doubt it. With less than two weeks before she heads back to “working for the man,” I’m sure there are a billion things still on her plate she wants to accomplish. And, as I mentioned in my last blog, our Tuesdays with M-Lori can be an energy suck. It’s in a good way, but it still leaves you drained. Not exactly what you want to feel when you’ve got so much to do. But, being the selfish friend that I am and the self-imposed sanity check for Lori, I told her she was crazy to think I wouldn’t get together with her this week. It’s so easy for any of us to say we’ve got other things to do. And we do…and probably lots of it, whatever “it” may be…but I refuse to surrender one of our last two gatherings to some To Do List. You see, Tuesdays with M-Lori is something that will never happen again. Not in the same way, at least. We’re at that moment in a “friends with kids” life where even though Matteo exists, he really isn’t that much of a bother. And it’s just him. So Lori’s first maternity leave has been like play time for her and me with little Matteo just a side note. But soon, Lori’s “Mommy and Me” classes will begin, then comes pre-school activities, then comes organized sports, then comes music lessons, then comes high school plays and such, before finally reaching the college stage which may or may not include a student (i.e. Matteo) living with her at home. And none of this includes the second, and potentially third, child Lori and Sal may have. So when she said maybe we should skip our get together this week, I said only what any self-absorbed, desperately-clinging-on-to-the-past-and-present friend would: oh hells no!

So as of now, Lori and I have lunch scheduled. At the very least, a girl’s gotta eat, right? There’s a part of me that says I should feel guilty for pressuring Lori into getting together. I’ve mentioned before how giving she is as a friend and it doesn’t surprise me that she’s agreeing to my request despite the pressure of the To Do List and the impending Going Back To Work deadline. But then I think about my friend, Linda, who, in her early 40s, recently has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. And I think about my good friend Heidi, my travel buddy, who lives back in Minnesota and whom I would love to see more than the once or twice a year that I do. And my grandma, to whom I used to write twice a week and talk once a week before she died—and how much I miss her terribly. When I think about these relationships, I can’t help but feel more than compelled to make the last of Tuesdays with M-Lori happen. There will always be things to do. There will always be stuff on our plate. But in the words of the wise Eminem: You better lose yourself in the music, the moment/You own it, you better never let it go/You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow/This opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo.

Yo. I’ll see ya tomorrow for lunch, Lori. And I’m ordering dessert.

Well, I have to agree with Lori; yesterday’s Tuesdays with M-Lori was pretty spectacular. The weather, the Adamson house, the surfers, the beach, the food, and the company were all an awesome experience. And it sort of felt like it was just Lori and me (with Lori lugging around a 12-lb. sack of potatoes) since Matteo was all cooperative. Hardly a peep out of him despite being awake most of the time. Way to go Matteo! I think he fully understands his survival depends on his mother’s ability to get out and have a good time once-in-a-while. Besides, if he wasn’t good, he knows we’d leave him with his father for the day. He’s a quick learner, that Matteo.

And yes, the ladies on the Adamson tour with us thought Lori and I were a couple. That’s what I love about LA…so many things are possible and there are such a combination of lifestyles. It always makes for interesting lunch conversation. At least for Lori and me.

That may be one of the reasons why Tuesdays with M-Lori always exhausts me. I come home spent and ready to crash. And it can take up to two full days to catch my breath and shake off the jetlag. Seriously. I don’t know if Lori experiences the same thing or not but man, oh, man, I’m sort of glad she’s going back to work because I don’t know how many more Tuesdays with M-Lori I can handle!

Maybe I’m exhausted because we do talk so much. We talk about everything, zigzagging our way from topic to topic, coming full circle and sometimes forgetting where we’ve been or whether or not we finished a point, just started another one, or are coming back to one we made earlier. And we’re always trying to outwit one another. Which means there’s always laughter involved. Believe it or not, a day of laughing can run you down. Or maybe I’m just pooped from all our activeness. Tuesdays with M-Lori isn’t about staying in. It’s about getting out and about. Museums, parks, beaches, gardens. And if we do end up at one of our homes, it’s for Creative Day or Brainstorming Day for the projects we’re working on. Not exactly a day of pedicures, chick flicks, and bon-bons (though, that does sound fun). Or maybe the exhaustion comes from Matteo. It’s not just a lot of work keeping him fed and changed and safe and alive, but he’s a growing entity. Maybe he’s sucking the energy out of us like a vampire. Or a leech. (No offense, Matteo. You know I love you!) Of course, there’s always the possibility that a full and active day just exhausts me because I’ve reached the ripe ol’ age of 37. It sucks getting old.

Anyway, I think both Lori and I should take pride in my (our?) Tuesdays with M-Lori fatigue. It’s not the kind of weariness that comes from having to entertain someone or worry about them. No, it’s the kind that comes from being hooked in and engaged with each other. It comes from working the heart and the soul and the mind and the body and the desire to be a good friend and have a good time with a good friend. As John Cougar Mellencamp said, “It hurts so good.”

But I’m still counting the days until Lori goes back to work. Just so I can catch my breath. In time for her next kid to come along.

I really enjoyed Lori’s blog yesterday. I love her paper chain! I’m so stealing the idea and using it for myself. And I love that she made the paper chain for herself, to remind her of her. She’s not always so good about taking care of herself mentally and emotionally, despite being a very independent, self-confident woman. The “problem” (insert sarcastic tone here) is that she’s an unbelievably giving person. It’s easy for her to focus on someone else, to shift her attention from her to others. It’s one of the things that worried/worries me about her having a baby. I fear she will allow the “Matteo factor” to become a natural excuse for not making time to be creative, to read a book, to take a class, or to do whatever it is she needs to do (i.e. hang with me!). In other words, she’ll tuck away her little soul in some corner of herself and not reach in and pull it out until all the kids have flown the coop. I’ve seen this happen to women with kids. We all have. How many of us know women who, after the last of the kids leaves the house, divorces their husband, goes back to school, becomes whatever it is that they’ve always wanted to be professionally, travels endlessly, gets breast cancer, and dies? Seems to be the typical path of way too many women, at least in the past generation. Let’s hope mine and Lori’s generation makes a break of it. And let’s hope it starts (or, probably more accurately, continues) with Lori!

Anyway, that’s not what I initially intended to write about today so let’s focus (since we’re already on that subject).

On Saturday, I got two letters in the mail. One was from my mom who was writing to thank me for the Hope’s Flame candles I had made for her. “They inspire me,” she wrote. “They make me feel comforted.” It was a really nice note and I have it on my desk, a place where I always have on display two or three cards whose words touched me in some way.

The other piece of mail I got was from my dad. It was a handwritten note attached to a coupon—you know the kind…from the Sunday paper. The note read, “For your cat! Actually, you should be able to use both sides of this. Get busy!” One side of the coupon was for the Cat Claws^TM M.A.X. Orca Scratcher. Yes, a scratching post-like thing for my cat. This is not the first time my dad has sent me something like this. He’s always looked out for my cats. He’s always liked my cats, even going so far as to ask about them whenever we talk on the phone. I always thought my dad was fine with me just having cats. But I guess I was wrong.

On the back of the Cat Claws^TM M.A.X. Orca Scratcher ad was a coupon for Johnson & Johnson baby products. Save $1.00 on any baby lotion, baby wash, baby oil, or baby powder. I got a kick out of it. I showed it to Emmett, my husband, and he just rolled his eyes. I guess he still doesn’t get my family’s sense of humor even after being around them for 17 years. “Your dad’s not kidding,” both my mom and Emmett said. And I’ve come to realize that now. Regardless, I got a good laugh out of it. I put my dad’s note on my fridge, alongside pictures from parties we’ve had or we’d been to, the snotty and witty refrigerator magnets Lori has sent me (“Prozac, Schmozac! Haven’t these people ever heard of a martini?”), and my grocery and Target lists.

It never occurred to me that men can have such strong feelings about the whole kid thing. I am fortunate to have met a man (and then married him) who also wanted to be childfree. I never realized how adamant he was about the whole thing until much later in our relationship, when, for whatever reason, I decided to test his seriousness on the issue by posing the “what if” question; not “what if I accidentally got pregnant?” but the much more scary, “what if I decided to keep the baby?” His response: “I’d leave.” He was dead serious. (And I couldn’t have been more thrilled.)

Just last week my friend Gerry told me her brother made a conscious choice to remain childfree and it cost him his first marriage. I remember working with a guy once who was looking for a woman who wanted to have lots of babies but was career focused so he could stay at home and raise the kids. I look at my brother and I can’t imagine him as anything other than a father. My childfree friend’s husband, Rob, shudders at the thought of kids. Literally.

I’m not sure why I assumed that men couldn’t care less one way or the other when it came to having kids. Maybe because they really can just walk away. Maybe because it doesn’t matter, to me at least, what they want. In the end, it’s up to us women. With the advances made in science and medicine, I know that line is becoming more and more blurred these days but it still feels that way. It still feels like the buck stops with us. Or in this case, the sperm. But I am glad that there are men out there who take ownership of their feelings. I wish they’d speak up more, then maybe us women wouldn’t look so abnormal when we do.

So, I’m sorry, Dad. Thanks for the coupons but I won’t be cashing in the Johnson & Johnson one. But I can’t wait to get my Cat Claws^TM M.A.X. Orca Scratcher in the mail! It should be here any day now.

Well, I never thought I’d see the day where Lori would compare herself to a gorilla…but stranger things have happened. Or so the saying goes.

And yes, I am pro-choice. On a lot of things. Actually, on everything. As my girl Marge Piercy says, “Without choice, no politics, no ethics lives.” Which is why the cover story on the March 3rd issue of The Nation caught my attention: “Missing: The ‘Right’ Baby.” It’s a look at a growing belief among U.S. Christian conservatives that a “demographic winter” is looming in Europe (with the implication that it’s just around the corner for us in the U.S.) citing falling birthrates among whites and rising Muslim immigration as the catastrophic combination sure to be the demise (economically and socially) of the world. And it’s causing panic throughout Europe with governments, such as those in Italy and Russia, rewarding people with “second-baby bonuses” of up to $8,900 (an idea not that hard to believe since we do a form of such a reward here in America too) as well as declaring a “Day of Conception,” where people get time off work to “conceive a patriot” for the country. Seriously.

Putting aside the obvious xenophobic sentiment, there is another reason this kind of thinking is scary. It’s clear that under the guise of patriotic duty, women are being pitched as the baby-making machines for the nation and that by failing to produce the required 2.1 offspring per couple (and that would be a straight couple, of course) we are failing to be and do what we were created to be and do. And guess what Christian conservatives are blaming for getting in the way of women’s reproductive responsibilities? Our demands for, and governments’ permissions of, safe and legal access to contraception and abortion, equal rights, fair divorce laws, education, and career opportunities. Shame on us to lose our focus like that.

It would be easy to dismiss this as right-wing wacko gibberish or foreign folly but to do so would be a big mistake. As the article pointed out, in Mitt Romney’s campaign exit speech he warned that “‘Europe is facing a demographic disaster’ due to its modernized, secular culture, particularly its ‘weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for human life and eroded morality.’” That from a U.S. Presidential candidate. Granted, it was said in his exit speech…but there are still 280 of his delegates out there.

More than once, my husband and I been told that of all the people in the world who should have children, it should be us. Smart, driven, happy, good heads on our shoulders, healthy. We would make good babies and be good parents (at least in theory). But I’m not going to procreate just because I can. Or should. What good would that do…to me, to the baby, or to my country? And even though Lori has a baby, she chose to do so. Matteo is wanted, not an obligation (or worse, a duty). And that makes a difference in so many ways.

So while I may appear to be a little over zealous with my use of the word “choice” or in my emphatic declarations of the choices I have made, if you consider yesterday’s, today’s, and tomorrow’s political climates, it’s obvious why. Quite frankly, I’d rather live in a nation on the brink of economic chaos than one where, in the panic for more of the “right” babies, we end up trampling on the foundation of our politics and ethics.