I don’t remember the condition of my friends’ houses when I was young. Whether or not there were ever dishes on their kitchen counters, or toothpaste on their bathroom sinks. I do remember long talks and complicated games and secrets kept. I remember feeling at home, but in that sort of “other” way that was a little different than your own house. The house rules were a little different. There was Schwann food in the freezer. Entenmann’s on the counter. Exotic hallmarks of my trips abroad into other neighborhoods.
Tonight, two of the three children of one of my good friends are adding their voices and their laughter to the evening’s soundtrack. Two sets of siblings who would likely be fighting if left to their own households (I’m really only speaking for mine, but quite definitively for mine), but instead they’re playing “Truth or Dare.” My oldest daughter has already been forced to bark at me from her haunches. They’re planning a Netflix marathon. They are hysterically laughing, and I can hear their voices drifting up from the basement stairs and through the vents. It reminds me that they’re growing pretty independent. Sleepovers used to be more work for us as parents. Now they’re less work, the occasional snack or redirection. Time to read. Time to write. 
These two frequent young visitors to our house are among the few people who see on a regular basis how we really live. There are dishes on our kitchen counter. Somehow, there are 7 water bottles and 2 travel mugs amongst them. I don’t even know how that happens. There is still pizza (the only official food of slumber parties) sitting out on the kitchen table. Someone might want a final piece (nothing to do with my Saturday night laziness).
A few weeks ago, I was rushing around one morning when these same friends were coming home from school with my daughters. There was no way that we were going to get to the cursory clean that I usually (try to) attempt when visitors are due (even visitors of single digit age). And while they’d seen our house just as — we’ll say lived in — before, it was then that I realized that they were a certain tier of friends. Top tier, specifically.
I texted their mother, one of my own top tier people, “It occurs to me that your kids are the only people who see how we really live.”
The text reply came back, “I was thinking the same thing one day when your kids were at our house. There is something liberating once your friends know how you live.”
Here’s to prioritizing laughter over laundry, and kid crafting over clean floors, books over dusting. And to the friends who know us all too well and still allow their children to visit.
On this Mother’s Day, I’d like to raise a glass (if we have one clean), to the other mothers from my childhood who let me run as wild in their homes as I did my own. To my surrogate college mom — my roomie’s mom — who took me in for a whole summer one year while I was working in the city, and countless weekends in between. To my friends now who I hesitate to allow inside my house on a random Wednesday evening, but who assure me that they get it and politely mention my houseplants instead of my messy floors. And to my own amazing mother, who made parenting look so easy that I thought it would be a breeze… I know better now, and love you the more for it.