A few weeks ago the subject of my birthday cropped up at home – a birthday at which convention dictates you must “do something”. Not being much of a person for following conventions, I asked if we could just invite some friends round for the afternoon, and forgot all about it.
At little after lunchtime yesterday they began to arrive – en masse. At one point mid-afternoon, I wondered if we could physically fit any more people into our kitchen. While alternately answering the door (which I eventually left open), catching up with people I hadn’t seen recently, and trying to find the glass I was sure I had put here (or there) a few moments ago, I kept meeting the various warring factions of children that were thundering around the house.
It was a great, great day – perhaps because we didn’t do anything pretentious, or false, or contrived. It was just us, our friends, all of our children, simple food, and enough wine to sink a battleship. It would probably have helped had we not been out until midnight the night before. While wondering why I was quite so tired this morning, more than one friend reminded me that I had been kind of “on it” from Saturday night, straight through Sunday.
Earlier on, I was trying to think what I might write about this weekend – that the words of this post should be somehow more considered than the normal rubbish I scribble down. Maybe the real “take-away” thing from this weekend is my friends.
For years, the only people I knew outside of work were those I knew on the internet. When I met W, I moved away from everywhere and everybody I knew to be with her. Granted, I didn’t have that many friends, but I had some – and suddenly they were gone. I remember going to everything I was invited to in that first year, and introducing myself to strangers as having just moved here, and not knowing anybody.
Having children has been something of a revelation – and against all expectation. Years ago I remember reading a weekend newspaper article about the friends you make, and how the parents of your children’s friends are not really your friends at all. It’s taken me years to realise (a) the article was wrong, and (b) the author was an idiot.
Over the last three or four years I have made some of the best friends I have ever known – and almost all of them through the children. They have become unlikely escapes from the stresses of the day – hiding out in Facebook and Twitter while fighting the daily battles with their own children. By virtue of the children we have all seen both the best, and the worst of each other. We have lost our tempers with our children in front of each other, laughed until we cried together, stood freezing cold at the side of football pitches together, got drunk together, eaten enough pizza to kill a Rhinoceros together, fallen asleep watching movies together, and a hundred other things.
I guess all I can say is a huge thankyou – not just to those who visited yesterday – but to everybody I know, that knows me as a friend – and thinks of me as a friend. You are all awesome, and you make the world – my world – a much more better place.
