I was sitting with two friends from my mothers group when I
made an embarrassing admission.
I told them I had a Mum Crush.
Now, there are two ways conversations like this generally
go. One is that people who have known you for years stare at you strangely,
there is an uncomfortable silence and then suddenly everyone remembers they
left a load of washing on and they all leave, never to speak to you again.
Luckily, this particular conversation went the other way.
‘Oh, me too,’ said one of them.
‘Hmmm, Simone*,’ sighed the other one
‘Yes!’ the other one said nodding.
I was a bit jealous they shared the same Mum Crush, but
their kids went to a different school than mine.
‘Who’s your Mum Crush?’ my friend asked. ‘Why is she so
good?’
I shrugged. I was hardly going to tell them that when I see
her I think of the ‘Everything is Awesome’ song from the Lego Movie, cos she is
just – awesome.
You have to remember Mum Crush’s aren’t about sex (what’s
that anyway?) or anything physical, so it wasn’t that she was particularly
attractive – although she is. To me, at least.
And it wasn’t that her life was something I coveted, or that
her kids were better than mine, or husband was more manly. None of these things
feature in a Mum Crush.
‘Well, I just find her fascinating. She talks about
interesting things and we have actual conversations,’ I said. ‘Remember those?’
I said sourly as our three year olds raced through the room with handfuls of
Tiny Teddies.
I said a LOT more than this (but have to maintain some level
of dignity here, unlike at Mothers Group where no one expects me to have any
dignity) until I realised I was gabbling like a school girl, gushing over the
fact that *gasp* someone liked to talk to me.
But my friends were nodding. They totally got it.
A Mum Crush is different to a friend, probably because they’re
just slightly outside your sphere. Perhaps your kids are in different classes
or they go to a different school. But you probably share something – a relic of
a life before you had kids perhaps – and she reminds you what it is like to be not a mum. And you love her for it.
Do you have a Mum Crush?
*Names have been changed to protect my friends. Actually,
since I can’t actually remember the name of their Mum Crush, it’s entirely
possible that is her real name. Sorry about that.
Don't your child-free friends remind you of what it's like not to be a Mum? I'm confused about the difference between that and a Mum crush!
ReplyDeleteMy child-free friends are few and far between these days, although I am glad to have a couple that I see semi-regularly. A mum-crush is different because often they remind you of the person you were before kids, and we are all very different people; both before - and after - having kids, so my child-free friends aren't necessarily like I was BK. Phew, I am not sure any of that made any sense. cheers, S.
DeleteI'm probably not following you correctly! :) Everyone changes over time, even people who don't have children, so I guess what I'm not understanding is how someone with children can remind you what your "old life" was like, but your child-free friends don't. Perhaps it's just that you and your Mum Crush have personal similarities in common that don't begin and end with both of you being mothers, which has led you to "click" with familiarity? Like, you would have wanted to be her friend even if it was't for the fact that your children brought you together?
ReplyDeleteInteresting how human relationships work! :)
That is partly true, and now you are making me think a lot more deeply on a Sunday morning that I usually do, but I consider that there are a great many of my Mum-friends who I would want to be friends with regardless of our child status, and in most-part our kids are totally irrelevant to our friendship, they are just the catalyst to our being in the same place at the same time.
DeleteIt's the extra spark, as you say,that is what makes a Mum Crush a crush... there is something more and extra, that you can't explain.
Although, you're certainly doing a good job of trying to make me :o)