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comfort. It’s a remarkable list, really, reminding me that life is unpredictable,
and not always in a bad way.
One day in the summer of 1992 , when my son was six months old, I got a
letter. It was handwritten, the kind you get only often enough to keep you
sorting through the junk mail. I read it three times.
The writer, A.J.Blye, was a mother of two who recently had moved to
Baltimore from California. She had gotten our name and address from the diaper
service we used, she said, and she had an idea.
I was on maternity leave and was beginning to realize how tough it was to
make new friends who’d want to spend time watching me mix up rice cereal.
I’ve never been one of these people who can knock on doors and introduce
themselves, striking up lifelong friendships. But A.J. was.
So my husband and I walked a few blocks to her house one Saturday and met
seven neighborhood couples who all had children still in diapers. In a few hours
we put together a baby-sitting co-op and agreed to a regular Friday-evening
exchange in which two couples would watch all the kids while the other six
couples went out. I came away with my list.
At first the numbers – as unfamiliar as the people on the other end of the line
– had no personality. So I was a little nervous about dialing, afraid I would call
at a wrong time or reach someone who wasn’t quite sure this co-op thing was a
good idea.
In a way, we trusted each other before we really knew each other. Moreover,
I sensed that people willing to share their children with me probably could be
trusted with mine. But the friendships took time.
Every Friday evening I learned more about the names on my list as we broke
up rumbles over toys or went out together on our off days. The numbers became
familiar, almost dialing themselves, and all the kids and mothers became
something special – the kind of extended family I didn’t have nearby.
The list changed my life. I realized that while having lunch with three other
mothers and four children one summer day. Pieces of hot dogs and french fries
littered the floor as we talked about books, movies and teething. I realized that I
would have liked these people as friends regardless of whether they had
children.
When I look at the juice-stained paper under the bagel magnet now, I see
what anchors me to the neighborhood. I’ve moved around quite a bit since
college – five cities in nine years – and none of them felt like home. But what
made my mother’s house a home? It wasn’t the framed photographs or the piano
or the fireplace. It was the phone numbers she could call whenever she needed a
friend to plan a party, to give one of her four children a lift or just to yak into the
night.
There is power in my list, power in its ready feedback and in the confidence it
gives me. If I have a party, someone will come to help me.
There was a time when such a list would have compiled itself, as people
grew up in their respective neighborhoods, settled down and had children. And
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