When Your Best Friend has a Baby

Missy delivered her second daughter yesterday, a tiny little peanut she and her husband named Lauren, which just so happens to be my middle name. 

I knew she was being induced in the morning, so I called her on her cell. We were on the phone during her first labor three years ago and that kid turned out to be really incredible, so I figured I better not break tradition. When she picked up the phone yesterday, she had already reached 9 centimeters. For people with limited knowledge about labor and delivery (raising hand), that's pretty close to official baby birthin' time. 

"Oh Miss...you're having a baby today!" I squealed.

I don't know if it was the drugs she was on or what, but her immediate reply wasn't "I know! Weird, right?"

It was "I want you to have one too."

Ba-boom. 

We met when we were 18--two sweet, silly college freshmen with interminable energy and few responsibilities beyond making our beds and passing the semester. We shared an apartment and blue jeans and inside jokes. I knew her before I got my first job, before my skin had lines, before I'd ever fallen in love.

Now we are in our thirties and our lives have changed.

She has a mortgage in Dallas, and I rent in Queens.

She is married, and I'd like to be.

She is a mother, and I am not.

I can tell she worries that I find her anecdotes about motherhood dull because I can't relate yet. I hope she knows that I don't find them dull at all, because she is the one telling the stories, and she is still the same funny, animated, silly girl I fell in love with back in college. 

But mostly, I know she worries that I will not have children at all, and I will miss out on something wonderful. Sometimes I have a hard time digesting the fact that I am the age that I am and need to start making some big decisions. Sometimes I wish my biggest responsibilities were still making my bed and passing the semester.

I am struggling with these changes, because we are in our thirties, and I feel like we are still the same.

She is spunky and optimistic, and so am I.
I am goofy and playful, and so is she.
We are two friends who feel like sisters.

And for now, I'm happy enough being an auntie to her two little girls. I hope they are sisters who feel like friends.