To L

Dear L:

As with all the other tributes I've written in the past few weeks, I find myself struggling to write yours. As you know, I'm rarely at a loss for words, so I'm just going to write from the heart.

In many ways, your friendship was so unexpected. On the surface, we have little in common except the fact that we were both pregnant at the same time. In fact, we met because of our pregnancies, and our friendship initially focused on our children. You were my "mommy friend." Wild Man and R were so much alike as infants that I knew I could turn to you after I had endured 5 sleepless nights. You wouldn't just sympathize--you could empathize, as you'd likely been up almost as long (or even longer with R). Being able to talk to you about how exhausted I was, Wild Man's struggles with sleeping, my desire to stop breast feeding even as I loved to do it, and so many other things has been wonderful. Frankly, I'm not sure I could have survived my first year as a parent without you to talk to--at least not with my sanity in tact.

As our boys grew, so did our friendship. I look forward to our daily emails, weekly breakfasts, and pool sessions. As your wonderful husband said to me a few days ago, leaving is hard because our friendship came so easily, so naturally, so effortlessly. I'm also sad to leave because I feel like we won't get an opportunity to know how close we could have become. But I know that isn't true, either. I know we will continue to talk daily, to cheer each other's parenting successes, and to help each other through the frustrations.

Love,
M.