Solitary feline

All summer, I've had nothing to do and nobody to do it with (go on, break out the tiny violins), and have been entertaining my children with little more than my ingenuity and a dwindling supply of bribes - and this morning, when I already have plans for the day, not one but two people ring me up and ask me to do stuff with them. It's ever thus, I suppose.

I'm not really a social butterfly. I'm not the girl in the middle of the gang, chattering excitedly and confidently to her circle of friends. I've always been more of a girl on the edges, and sometimes a cat who walks by herself - and I've made peace with that.

In junior school I had a best friend or two. In secondary school I had a best friend and then I didn't, and then I had some fellow Social Reject Friends who liked me just fine, and some Walking Home With Friends, who didn't seem to like me much, but they let me hang around with them and sometimes even invited me to do stuff. I may have been pathetically grateful. I remember at least one occassion when I got all dressed up to go out because someone had said something about doing something on Friday night, but then nobody rang me. That was sad. I don't know whether I rang anyone to find out what was happening. I don't think I was up to such an assertive move back then.

In college, I started to make some real friends - people I liked and who liked me, who would actually wait for me after lectures or look out for me at lunchtime. But I always had a book to read (the joys of studying English), and if necessary I could pretend I didn't want to be chatting and laughing and having fun. I was bookworm-girl on Tuesdays and Thursdays when my friends' lunch breaks didn't coincide with mine, or they had other things to do.

But I also started learning about faking it till you make it, and how other people who might look to me as if they were right in the middle of the circle still felt like they were only on the edges too. I started to understand that friendships wax and wane and you don't have to swear undying fealty to one another and meet each other for every single lunchtime - you could be friends with people and still only see them now and then. In fact, sometimes those were the best sort of friends - the ones who didn't demand constant attention, but were happy to pick up where you'd left off whenever the last time was, without a barrage of accusations about how you like that girl in your Postcolonial Literature seminar better than them. Friends are not boyfriends. (I got one or two of those too. That helped matters significantly, I must admit.)

So now here I am, faking it and making it on a daily basis, and keeping us occupied, and sometimes meeting friends and sometimes just being on our own. It's different now, because we're three cats who may or may not walk by ourselves: Monkey and Mabel and I, and we're thrown together sometimes too much, and then we yowl and scratch at each other a little bit, but we rub along pretty well.

But I hope I'm not making my children less sociable than they would be if they had a mother who was constantly surrounded by others. I think Monkey, so far, is pretty oblivious to who hangs out with whom in his little circle, and whether or not he's included: it may be a boy thing, or just a personality thing; or maybe I'm wrong and he's all twisted up about it inside, but I don't think so. Mabel seems like she'll be a leader, not a follower, so maybe she'll be the one in the middle in a few years' time - or maybe she'll be the one out in front, not caring who's coming behind her.  Maybe she'll be like some four-year-old girls I've observed who are have already discovered the heady power of bestowing and witholding friendships in the playground, but I hope not.

(One way or another, they'll get to the teen years and There Will Be Angst, but if there's one thing I would say to a teenager to help them through that slough of self-consciousness, it's that nobody else cares nearly as much as you think they do about what you're doing and how you look, because they're all far too busy worrying about themselves.)

And next week, Mabel and I will be cats walking by ourselves, together, sometimes with friends; and Monkey will be making his own way and making new friends and showing people his new shoes and hopefully not worrying too much about what they're thinking about him. Long may his obliviousness last.