I’m so happy that we’ve been able to find one parent with one child in this building who we not only get along with, but are willing to leave the general Upper West Side area. We planned this play date months ago after I’d told Hugo’s mother about Space Club in Greenpoint. Yesterday, we met them at a Japanese restaurant in the area that had a nice garden/outdoor seating area where the kids could run around and be silly. Then we walked over together to Space Club, where the kids had so much fun we had to drag them out at the end of our two-hour play time. Hugo’s mom wasn’t very keen on taking the train back into the city, so she suggested we catch the ferry from Greenpoint to 35th Street and FDR. Kaia got pretty excited at the idea of being on a boat, so I relented and we took the ferry back. Annoyingly. this ferry is not free, nor is it covered by OMNY card. But if you buy a 10-ride pass, it evens out to $2.90 per ride, which is the same cost as the subway. We got single rides, which cost $4.50 per adult, but that still seemed like a reasonable cost just for the experience of taking the ferry. The ride was over before we knew it!

We ended up spending almost six hours together today, so Hugo’s mom and I definitely talked quite a bit. I realized why she was so open to scheduling play dates with us: she told me that sometimes, she feels isolated being here because her life pre-child was just work, work, work. Most of her good friends are back home in Turkey, and she hasn’t been able to find or build a Turkish community here. She spends so much time working that when she isn’t working, she either wants to spend it traveling or simply with her son. So when she is able to make friends, it usually is with others who don’t have family nearby — people like me. She’s found that when people have family nearby in New York, they are less open to making friends with her and impossible to make plans with.

I empathize with her a lot. For years, I struggled to make friends living here outside of a tiny handful. I definitely do not have any “mommy/parent network” here the way so many others I know do in other cities/states/countries. In fact, other than her and a couple other friends in New York, that’s really all I have for a “parent network.” Now, I finally feel like I have a decent number of local friends who I genuinely like, enjoy being around with, and can be totally open with. This was not always the way it was.

But in some ways, chatting with her about this made me realize how far I’ve come. In the last number of years when I’ve met people that I find interesting or particularly kind, I just reach out to them and ask them to hang out. I have nothing to lose, right? If they say “yes,” great. And if they say “no,” meh; it’s their loss. But I guess that level of confidence really only comes with time and age. I’m also lucky to have a flexible work schedule where I am not married to my work. I’m happy that we’ve been able to sort of be friends, and I am even more thrilled that Kaia and Hugo have a mutual affection for each other.