You may be familiar with the e-mail that outlines the types of friends that come through your life. 

Are they the seasonal type, designed to help you get from point A to point B and then they disappear? Or is your friend a friend for life, steady by your side. 

Like a good handbag, friends come in all shapes and sizes.  And like a good handbag, no matter what the style, you hang onto it because it is your sure thing.  Your old standby.  The moral:  Never underestimate the power of the true Best Friend Forever (the BFF). 

When I became a mother my whole world shifted.  Not just because this little addition became the  center of my universe.  Literally, my whole world changed overnight.  I was a working woman who covered a large geographic territory.  I loved my job.  I knew this baby would come, but I just didn’t understand how it would impact my stable, organized world.

Big Guy showed up early and I ended up leaving my job.  His tiny little body in neonatal care did me in.  What I didn’t realize is that when I left my job, I left my friends and their working, childless world behind.

Don’t misunderstand.  There were some wonderful women I still keep in touch with.  But here I was, alone in the new mommy world.  This was now the Gymboree crowd. Cool diaper bags, not expensive handbags.  Bottles of breast milk, not the kind you take to the gym.

And I had tons of matter of fact, logical, scheduling questions.  How was I supposed to take the baby to the doctor if it was time for him to eat when we were driving on the Beltline?  Couldn’t I bump that meeting back by a half hour?  As I went through e-mail and voice mail withdrawal, I yearned for conversation and for advice.  But my world was different now.

There were a couple of candidates in the beginning.  You know, the ones you meet in the baby classes or bump into when you go listen to the lady sing songs at the coffee shop.   But you need to be careful.  The mommy connection is great, but it can only get you so far.  What happens when your true personality emerges because you finally start sleeping through the night?  When you start going lady shopping instead of baby shopping?  When complaining about the boy in the house actually refers to your husband and not your son? Will your potential BFF be the right one?

I got lucky.  It took time to find her.  Isn’t there an expression about that relating to men?  But patience prevailed.  It began like a courtship.  We had to feel each other out.  You slowly make the overtures and get beyond the “kids in common” theme. You become friends … like the kind you used to have “back in the day." You each spill the details of your life.  She gets to know the real, little bit crazy you and she is still there. 

The years pass, and even though you have confessed your worst mommy moments to her  (you know what I am talking about) she hasn’t judged you.  Or, on the slim chance that she has, you know she was right.  You would actually even listen to her criticism, knowing in your heart that if your husband had given you the same feedback, you would have gotten into a huge argument with him.  You have gotten used to talking to her at least three times a day about basically nothing.  And you know that if a day went by and you hadn’t connected by 1:30, she would call to make sure everything was OK.

Then you realize you have found her. You know now that if you left your house in the morning with the dirty dishes in the sink, the beds unmade, the laundry folded but not yet put away and your bathroom not having been cleaned properly in two weeks and you happened to get into a horrific car wreck and you needed someone to come over and take care of your kids and husband for a bit, you wouldn’t mind her seeing your home in that total state of disarray.  She would actually clean it up.

After all, isn’t that the true test of friendship?

Illyse Lane appears every Thursday on TriangleMom2Mom.