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“Oh, Marie.” I laugh, shaking my head. “Lois’ daughter, right?”
Her head tilts to the side, then recognition hits her. “Oh my goodness, Busy!” She stands and walks toward me, surprising me when she wraps me in a hug. “How have you been? You’ve grown up so much!”
Chuckling, we both take a seat. “Good, I’ve been good.”
“And you have a daughter. I thought I heard about that from my mom.”
A gracious way to say she heard about my unplanned pregnancy throughmymom gossiping with hers. The reality of small-town life.
“I do. Her name is Junie.”
Marie looks over to where Junie and Leo are playing. “What a cute name.”
We both watch our kids for a moment in easy silence. If I remember correctly, Marie is around the same age as Boyd and Briar, though I can’t recall whether any of them were friends. She’s also Reid’s cousin, the two of them growing up super close, almost more like siblings.
Licking my lips, I look back toward where our kids are playing, trying my best to shove all thoughts of Reid to the side.
“How are you liking being back in town?”
I cross my legs and rest my hands in my lap, nodding. “It’s going good, I guess?” Then I shrug. “It’s an adjustment, for sure. But I know we’re better off here than we were before. Being near family, especially.”
Marie’s eyes turn soft. “Change is always hard, but it’s so much easier when you have a great support system. My mom mentioned that Patty’s watching Junie?”
“Yeah. It’s been amazing, having that kind of help.”
“I know what you mean. Mom used to watch my daughter Nina, until she started pre-K this year, and she does the same with Leo.”
My shoulders droop, relief coursing through me at the fact that Marie is in a similar situation as me, relying on her parents for help with her kids. There’s a kind of guilt I feel, leaning on my mom, needing her help.
It might be because things between us are strained right now, but I know it’s mostly because I feel like if I had been married or had my life more together when I finally had a kid, I wouldn’thaveto rely on her like this.
“Do you ever feel guilty?” I ask her, feeling suddenly desperate to get someone else’s thoughts. “I mean, my mom used to garden all the time and do farmer’s markets and play bunco with her friends. Now she’s a nanny, and I keep waiting for her to get sick of it.”
Marie smiles. “She’s not ananny. She’s agrandmother,” she says, her eyes twinkling. “My guess, knowing Patty, is she wouldn’t have offered if she didn’t want to have that time with your daughter—if she didn’t want to helpyou.” She shrugs. “My mom quit working at One Stop to watch Nina when she was born, and my husband and I didn’t even need her to. She just wanted the responsibility. She said it gave her a ‘renewed purpose’ when she was starting to feel like her usefulness on earth was waning, though she tends to be kind of dramatic.”
I laugh at that, even as I consider what she’s just said. I feel surprisingly buoyed by her response. It hadn’t ever occurred to me that, yes, my mom is doing something amazing for me, but there’s also probably something she gets out of it, too.
“That’s actually…really helpful,” I tell her, grinning sheepishly. “Thanks for sharing.”
“No problem.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes, just enjoying the sun and watching our kids giggle as they dump out all the sand they just finished putting into the bucket.
“Hey, I don’t know what you’re up to on Friday morning,” Marie says a few minutes later, bringing my attention back to her, “but I have a group of women who come over to my house every week. The kids run around in the yard and we sit around complaining and drinking mimosas. It makes me feel a lot more sane to chat with other moms who get what I’m going through. Do you want to come?”
Warmth blooms in my chest at the unexpected invitation. I literally can’t imagine something I want more.
“I would love to. Let me just check with my sister? I’m working for her at the bookstore, so I want to make sure it’s okay for me to shuffle around my hours.”
Marie smiles, and I smile back. It’s been a long time since I’ve made a new friend, and being a single mom during my last year of college meant the few friends Ididhave scattered faster than I ever could have imagined. It never even occurred to me to hang out with other moms because there justweren’tany.
But it makes sense, the idea that spending time with women who also have kids would be cathartic somehow. A chance to find people who understand how incredibly hard it is.
Marie and I chat for a bit longer, until she leaves with Leo, letting me know she’s looking forward to seeing me in a few days.
The entire interaction leaves me with a kind of uplifted feeling I haven’t experienced in quite some time. Pregnancy and motherhood have been—for the most part—incredibly lonely. This…makes me feel like there are good things around the corner, like this is a sign of what’s to come.
I guess I can only hope.
