I made a sambo for my kid. My frenemy trolled me for it

"So that brings us to the day it all came to a head: #SandwichGate Day." 

Friendship with other mums is a funny thing, because parenting is controversial.

And, let's face it, many of us are secretly a tad judgey.

I was judged by a frenemy about a sambo I made for my kid for his school lunch; and no, it’s not because I packed Cheetos or a bag of nuts. It is because I shared a photo of it on Facebook.

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I had a friend; let’s call her Susan. We’d been former work besties, but our friendship had not quite made it into real life, where we discovered we were ‘different’, aka, hated almost everything about each other.

Now, spending time together IRL, it became clear that our values, despite both becoming recently-single parents, weren’t the same. 

Source: Nama Winston

"Susan didn't approve of me at all"

Susan criticised me for not giving my three-year-old breakfast, when he’d refused to eat it. 

She didn’t like the car I’d bought. She didn’t like that after my divorce, re-partnering wasn’t my top priority for the sake of my son.

She didn’t like that I would put a biscuit down on MY sofa halfway through eating it to attend to my child. She didn’t like that I’d put on a movie for the kids while we chatted.

Susan didn’t like the real-life me and wanted to make that clear as oftenas possible.

So that brings us to the day it all came to a head: #SandwichGate Day.

This is a work of ART. Source: Nama Winton

"Close to Martha Stewart"

I posted the above photo of a sandwich I had carefully made for my four-year-old, on my private Facebook page for the viewing pleasure of my ‘real’ friends.

It was FB-worthy, because it was shaped in my son’s initial - W. How clever and original is that?! 

As it turns out, not remotely at all, but damn it, since I can barely bake a cake, I was proud of my Martha-Stewart level achievement.

I captioned my photo:

"Tried something different today - as close to Martha Stewart as Winston will ever eat. #buttersandwich"

It was a proud mummy moment, and yes, I was totally taking the piss out of myself. I thought it was funny at the time, because I, very clearly, am no domestic goddess. I don’t think I’d ever made anything to be proud of for my son at that point.

Most of my friends seemed to get my joke about the sandwich, and it gave them a chuckle.

But Susan was not as impressed as she should have been. Not. At. All.

"You need a job or a hobby!", she angrily wrote in the comments.

Finally, after months of snide comments I’d let slide, I grabbed this one and hurled it back.

"Um... OK, this is literally my job and my hobby," I rage-typed defensively. 

"No, you're obsessed with your child! Sheesh!" Susan rage-typed back.

I am obsessed with my child?

It was quite literally my job to be obsessed with my child, wasn’t it? At least to the point of making him a white bread butter sandwich in a very rough shape of a ‘W’?

"It's my job to be obsessed"

I knew it was all over, red rover, at that point. There was no coming back from that. I’d had enough of sanctimonious Susan.

I didn't think I needed to apologise for the post, or even change it. I went silent, and that was the last time we ever communicated. Neither of us reached out again.

It was sad to say goodbye to Susan, the best lasagne-maker I’d ever known, but it had to be done.

As Miley Cyrus would sing, I can make my own lasagne.

Had Susan not been a mum herself, I might have understood the ‘obsessed’ accusation. But I would have thought she, who was an attentive and loving mum herself, wouldn’t attack me for caring too much. For making an effort for my kid.

Susan didn't have to agree with my parenting. But if she was a good friend, a real friend, she just had to do one thing: keep her opinions to herself. She chose not to do that, and lost our friendship as a result.

Shame.

Originally published as I made a sambo for my kid. My frenemy trolled me for it