I’ve just got back from a big weekend away with some of my oldest friends. A few years ago it would have been a mad one: pub seshes, hot tubs, pranks, worries that the Airbnb damage deposit was long gone. This, though, was going to be different. For the first time, one couple brought their kids along too.
And it was brilliant. Their six-month-old was so adorable nobody minded when she puked on people’s shoes. Their two-year-old ran around putting stickers on everyone and attacking us with a plush highland cow. All of us adults wanted to hang out with them. The last I saw of the two-year-old, she was in a huff because she didn’t want to leave.
It was the most beautiful weekend, the exact opposite of how I’d worried this new baby era was going to be. Ever since my wife and I had had the talk about having children and decided it probably wasn’t going to be for us, I had felt this gnawing dread whenever other couples started talking about having kids. It was the big fork in the road up ahead which I tried to ignore, but which we were trundling toward all the same.
As my mates and I got into our late twenties and early thirties, the pregnancy announcements started to pile up. And don’t get me wrong, I was genuinely delighted every time. I knew, though, that the equilibrium of the group would change with each new arrival, and I’d have to make my peace with losing my mates to the soft play trenches for years to come.
It’s not just the kids – I feel more loved by the parents too, even 30 years since I first met some of them (Photo: Lara Stubbs)Some said they probably weren’t going to have kids either. Then, a few years later, out would come the first trimester scans. Again, most of me would be extremely happy. But a grotty little bit of me thought: you turncoats. How could you do this to the pub quiz team? You didn’t think about me while you were trying to conceive at all, did you?
I knew even then that I was being ridiculous. It’s not like we were in each other’s pockets like we were as teens; it always took about two months to sort out a time to see each other anyway. But it felt like a definitive end to something. The group of mates I grew up with at home has stuck together over years when we were splintered across the country; we always made time to come back to each other again. New Year’s Eve is a non-negotiable: we haven’t missed one together since 2008.
Now here was something permanent, something even more non-negotiable, and it’s the best thing to happen to us as a group in ages. I was right about my friends with kids changing, but they’ve changed for the better. A mate of 15 years stayed at our flat recently after a gig nearby, and we stayed up talking about all the things we always did: films, Taylor Swift, the season’s new novelty McDonald’s menu items. But soon we got onto his one-year-old daughter.
This mate always had a very endearingly dad-ish energy: sweet, sincere, keen to arrive at the station at least 45 minutes before the train leaves. But since actually becoming a dad, it’s like he’s ascended to another plane. It’s like he’s the first man ever to become a dad. He couldn’t get his phone out quick enough to show off her Halloween outfit, her trips to the park and her bopping away to Charli XCX. His sheer wonder at his daughter growing and changing has an intensity he used to reserve for defending maligned Star Wars spin-offs. It was utterly lovely.
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It’s not all about the kids though. Obviously, I love the kids. They’re ace. But the biggest thing is that I feel more loved by the parents too, even 30 years since I first met some of them. It’s the fact that they’re trying to keep a baby alive and happy, and take in the wonder of parenthood, and navigate work on broken sleep, and make peace with most of their belongings smelling faintly of sterilising fluid – and in the face of all that, they’re still keen to hang out. That commitment to our friendships, however much it’s motivated by a desire to escape the Bermuda Triangle of nappies, feeds and Mr Tumble, is so beautiful.
I knew we loved each other, and we were good at showing it. But what’s been really amazing about kids turning up is that I hadn’t realised just how much love we still had to tap into. The newest members of the gang have slotted straight in. More than that, I like the people my friends have become even more than I did the people they were before, and I like the person I get to be with them and their kids.
They say children change you, and that’s definitely true – I just didn’t expect those kids to be other people’s.
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