A New Dating Service?

I'm thinking of starting a dating service.

A playdating service...

somewhere you can put in where life has taken you, your parenting style, what Mommy traits drive you insane and what put you at ease.

a place to cut all the crap and make finding a mom who you get along with, and has nice kids to boot, a much easier process.

Since having kids I always had this vision of perfect playdates, coffee with moms while our children play peacefully, swapping recipes and clothes our kids have outgrown... the quintessential life of a stay at home mom.

Autism and preemies and loss and then getting pregnant again before my preemies could even venture out in public threw a bit of a wrench in my plan and it seems I have just joined the land of the living this past year.

And finding a mommy AND kid match is hard.  The mom can be great and then low and behold my son's on his back after a cheap shot from her never disciplined, candy-eating-in-the-morning, terror of a boy.

Or the kids can be off to a good start, clicking in whatever way three year-olds can manage and then the mom says something genius, and telling.  Telling me that our conversations have no future.

And my playdate visions deflate.

But I am learning.  I am learning that I am not going to find the mirror image of my family out there but if I give it time our lives will gravitate to each other.  I will bump into another mom on the playground who is sweating as I am because she also has more little ones than arms and not one of them is coordinated enough for the tall slide.

Or I will find the perfect friend in someone who is balancing triplets and special needs and coping with her own feelings of loss of a different kind, who doesn't flinch when I talk about all of my children and we will click and could close just about any restaurant, spilling tales of our crazy lives and laughing about things that aren't funny when they're happening.

And that is the perfect in the imperfect.

That there is no match out there, whether you have 2 kids, a dog and not a struggle to be had or whether you have a bit of an unconventional brood and are forced to search for moms who have walked your path, there is no magic service to help you find the matching mom and kids of your dreams.  You have to find them, or they will find you.

My friends from around the country, each with surviving triplets.

And when you do?  You will be rewarded.  With conversations long enough to drive a wait staff insane or kill a phone battery, with recipes they found (without the dairy of course), with a chapter long comment on your blog to tell you they get it or a few short sentences to say they don't but they are here anyway.

Since all that has happened from the time I became a mom and all that has not, I have often felt like I am on another planet.

In fact I think I might be.

But having visitors makes my planet a pretty comfortable place to live.

Edited to add: If you happen to have had a child when you were a bit too young who was then diagnosed with autism, got married eight years after that only to struggle with infertility, get pregnant with triplets, lose a child and then get pregnant again without even trying EMAIL ME, we are destined for the perfect playdate :)