My husband and I have been watching “Your Friends & Neighbors” on Apple TV. The premise: A wealthy, recently unemployed father (played by Jon Hamm) decides to start stealing from his equally wealthy neighbors in order to pay the bills. In the show’s universe, a fictional East Coast suburb called Westmont Village, the characters enjoy what my parents always called “Lifestyles of the Rich and Swinish.” Between playing tennis at the swanky country club and attending lavish neighborhood galas, they drive fancy sports cars and redecorate their massive homes. It’s this extreme amount of wealth that allows Hamm to rationalize his crimes: He figures no one will notice or care if a bracelet or watch goes missing.
While the show focuses on Hamm’s ill-fated career transition, his ex-wife, Mel (played by Amanda Peet) goes on a journey of her own that’s been fascinating to watch. In Season 2, Mel is perimenopausal, rattled by her changing body and the realization that her teenage daughter might take a completely different path than her parents expected. Peet delivers some hard-hitting truths about midlife that I wasn’t expecting. (I just learned that Amanda Peet was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer in 2025, a fact that makes me feel even more invested in her role in the show.)
In one episode titled, “We Were Never Supposed to Get This Old,” Peet wonders aloud what will happen to her once the kids leave the proverbial nest. She worries she’ll become, as she puts it, “some lonely old hag living in a big empty house.”
I’ve had the same thoughts, especially now that I have a rising senior in high school. Wasn’t it just yesterday when we brought our kids home from the hospital, strapped into their tiny infant car seats? I remember when my biggest concern was getting my daughter to take a long nap so I could get some work done. Now we’re immersed in the college search process with our oldest, and our youngest is about to start behind-the-wheel drivers’ training. How did those years tumble by in a flash?
We remake our lives for our kids because they are our whole world. And then one day, as Peet says, “They leave.”
That was the point of all of this, of course. We’re not meant to live with our mothers forever. We’re supposed to launch our children into the big wide world and let them fly. It’s a blessing and a gift and blah-blah-blah, I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining, but also? It’s hard to accept that we have to let them go.
Because you don’t ever stop being a mom. It’s not like deciding to change careers or stop eating meat. How do you turn off the inclination to nurture, protect, and help? Who do you become once your kids stop needing you constantly? Morphing into an old hag who putters around an empty house and watches birds is one option, though I hope it’s not the only option.
I’m eager to see what happens with Mel’s storyline throughout Season 2.
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