Ghost Mom

Lately all of my Manhattan mom friends have been moving out of the city.  I am shamelessly and openly jealous of them for making a break for it, yet I must press on here without them, and I'm trying to pick up new women left and right.

I sometimes go to mom meet-ups, but Katherine is interested neither in sitting in her stroller while I chat, nor in sitting really anywhere while I chat.  So I spend most of the time chasing her around, which I can do on my own, anywhere.

We go to baby classes and I am acquainted with and chat with a few other moms, but I often think of a recent groundbreaking study, probably something I saw on the Today Show, that revealed that social media has made us less social in reality.  They say it's because you always have your nose in your smartphone and don't interact with strangers and neighbors, which I'm sure is a huge part, but no one mentions another reason: that since it is so easy to keep up with old friends, there is no real need to make new ones.

"You want to hang out IRL?  You must be a loser with not enough Facebook friends."

A couple of weeks ago I got overly excited to discover a new mom in my building with a 9-month-old son.  I saw them a few times and once bumped into them at the grocery store across the street and walked back to the building with them, enjoying a friendly chat.  She said they were only in temporary housing for a couple of weeks and then moving away (of course), but I decided to try to get in touch with her anyway if she wanted to kill some time together in Central Park before they moved away.  Look at me, being friendly!

I wrote a note and asked one of our doormen to help me since I didn't know her last name or her apartment number, only her first name and the floor she lived on.  He showed me a list of everyone who was moving in / out over the past few months and neither her nor her husband's name was on it.

The only logical explanation is that she and her son are ghosts.  I haven't seen them since and can only assume they have moved away at this point or have vanished into thin air, as ghosts tend to do.  If we looked back at surveillance footage of the day we walked back together from the store, it would probably show me walking alone with Katherine.

You couldn't have spoken with her ... She died ... 50 years ago ... TONIGHT.