Reconnecting

This weekend, four of my college friends and I met up to spend the weekend together. It's something we've tried to do at least once a year for the past thirteen years. In the beginning, it was easy and we got together far more than just once a year. Several of my friends lived in NYC and it was a great excuse to head up there for a fun weekend. In the past few years though, pregnancies, kids, living further apart (in places as diverse as Iraq and Nicaragua), finances and other obligations have made finding a weekend to get together more challenging. I've missed the last two get togethers because we were about to move and then because of the logistics of getting to Miami from Los Angeles for two days. This past weekend made me realize how much I've really missed my friends and how important it is to figure out a way to get together more often, no matter how challenging that is.

On Saturday morning, I left Toby in the girls in the newly transformed winter wonderland of Boulder, picked up a car through a local car share and headed to the airport to pick up Diana and Karima, flying in from Miami and Brooklyn. From there, we drove another half an hour south to meet up with Annie, who travelled from Maine, and Jen, who sent her husband and older kids to her brother's and hosted us for the weekend. When I picked Karima and Diana up at the airport, we commented on how long it had been, but within about two minutes it felt as though no time had passed at all. We had a lot to catch up on, but the laughter and the easy flow of conversation was unchanged. When we arrived at Jen's house, we all sat down for lunch together and found ourselves laughing until we were crying time and time again.

We spent most of the weekend sitting by the fire, drinking wine, eating good food (without having to get up during meals), shopping (without having to worry about a little one escaping from the dressing room), looking at old photographs, passing Jen's new baby Larson from lap to lap, talking, laughing and relaxing. We turned the tv on once to watch Project Runway, which somehow all of us had missed that week and which Jen fortunately taped, and it was so nice to be sitting on the couch, making comments about the show together. I felt like I was back in college again, minus a terrible hangover and minus some of the juicy gossip we used to enjoy in those days (though fortunately Annie brought $35 worth of gossip magazines to fill the void.)

Need I even say that the weekend was absolutely wonderful? It is always fun to catch up with good friends, but something about the weekend was more than just fun. It was therapeautic. I love my family and my life with them, but there are days when I feel defined by my role as a mother of three children. It's hard to be fun and interesting when you are mopping the bathroom floor or struggling to get three people out the door with lunches made and mittens on. Spending the weekend with my college friends, I realized they don't see me that way at all. They have known me since we were all hanging out on our dorm couch in flannels, Doc Martens and patched jeans, with husbands and children and careers a distant thing in the future. Of course, seventeen years changes people. I am different and so are they. We've all grown up and, given some of the memories we discussed over the weekend, that's a really good thing. But our ability to talk to each other about our lives and enjoy each others' company and perspectives has remained the same.

On Monday, we all headed back home to our lives and families. It was wonderful to see Toby and the girls again and I jumped back into the chaos of life with three kids again carrying the memories of a very relaxing weekend with me. It is sad living so far apart, but Diana has an apartment in Miami and I'm already looking forward to our next gathering, where we'll leave the fireplace behind and catch up with sand between our toes.

The Hangover

Evie: Mommy, why are you so sick?
Me: I hate to admit this Eve, but the truth is that I am hungover.
Evie: Oh. Is that contagious?

I am writing this entry from the couch. Lying down. I can actually type quite well this way. What I can't do is keep down food or sit up. Why? Because I am suffering from the absolute worst, God-awful hangover of my life.

It's actually been a while since I've been truly hungover. In fact, I don't think I ever really have been since having kids. I mean, I've had your run-of-the-mill wake-up-craving-bacon-egg-and-cheese hangover from time to time, but between pregnancies and breastfeeding and even trying to get pregnant, I haven't really drank that much over the past nine years. I think the last time I woke up feeling really awful was the day after our wedding, when, after being sick numerous times in the hotel room, I attended my wedding brunch still in my guacamole-smeared dress. My grandparents were slightly horrified. Come to think of it, I seemed prone to having bad hangovers whenever I had somewhere to be the next day because the time before our wedding was after our engagement party. My friend Annie had to shove me in the shower and help me get dressed the next morning so that I could attend my sister-in-law's baby shower. Which I did, wearing sunglasses the entire time. Inside the house.

Anyway, those hangovers don't even seem that bad when I consider how familiar I've become with the inside of our toilet today. Eleven hours of lying on the couch, sipping Gatorade, and not being able to keep it down. Ugh.

The lesson? When you haven't had much more than a beer or two in a night for nine years, it's probably not a great idea to jump that number up to seven. Chances are, that's just not going to go over well.

The silver lining in all of this is that the whole reason I am hungover is that we had a great night. We threw a party and had a mix of neighbors, local friends from high school and college, and friends we've met out here all come. People started arriving at 3:30 with food and drinks and, after several hours of eating, drinking, talking and watching kids run around, most people headed home around 8:00. Some of my friends from high school stayed though, putting their kids to bed so we could sit outside and talk and listen to music.It was wonderful to catch up after so many years and I'm hoping to do it again soon. Next time though, I'll be a little more sober.

As for the girls, I wasn't sure whether or not to explain my situation. For the most part, I started drinking after they went to bed. I could have very easily claimed to be suffering from a stomach flu, but decided that, since they had never seen me this way before and hopefully never would again, it was a good opportunity for a lesson. Toby and I sat down with them and talked about alcohol and how it is poisonous at certain levels. It lead to a lesson about addiction and then several questions about our organs (stomach, liver, kidneys), which had me wishing I had taken anatomy.

Fortunately, friends offered to have the girls over for a playdate so they didn't have to spend the whole day in the house with nothing to do. But when they came back, all three of them joined me on the couch and we spent several hours snuggling and watching episodes of Frances, with Noni yelling out "That's me! That's me!" whenever Frances' little sister Gloria showed up. It was nice spending time with them just lying there together and I realized that too often I am talking to them over my back while sweeping or loading the dishwasher. Another lesson from me out of the situation: to take more time just to be with my kids, without rushing around. I think I'll enjoy that even more when I'm feeling better.

Home Sweet Los Angeles

Yesterday afternoon, five second grade girls came over to our house. I had invited all six of the girls in Evie's class to come over a few weeks ago, days after her comment about feeling unnoticed at recess, but hadn’t actually expected such an enthusiastic response. I was initially excited that she would have an opportunity to get to know her classmates better, but as the day approached, I began to feel a little nervous about having them all here. I wasn’t concerned with the chaos - in Frederick, we had parties with seventy-five people where the children outnumbered the adults. As the scribbles on our walls and stains on the couches clearly show, chaos has long been the norm in our family. But after hearing about Evie‘s shyness around her classmates at recess, I began to imagine them all as something out of a bad Hannah Montana episode. I envisioned them sitting around the table, sighing with boredom, and excluding Evie from their pre-teen conversation.

Fortunately, my vision was shattered even by the time we walked the two blocks home. The girls held hands with each other, easily dividing into partners with no hurt feelings, and spent the way home talking about how excited they were for a play date. I could tell this was a group of sweet, fun and basically typical girls. Of course I shouldn’t say “typical” , as they are obviously all unique - there is funny and somewhat bossy Jessica, quiet and thoughtful Julia, energetic Charlotte (who demonstrated a full split and numerous back walk-overs in our living room), chatty and cheerful Joy and studious and shy Nicolette - but they fell into the role of typical seven-year-old play with ease. They sat at the table, eating snacks and singing to Camp Rock. They dove right into imaginative play, with Jessica turning into the queen of the tree house and the other girls dividing into messengers and servants and pets for the queen. They built crowns out of pipe cleaners and showed each other songs they knew on the piano. And all the while, Evie was completely part of the group, hugging and giggling and playing.

When the girls’ parents came to pick them up, each one mentioned getting together again in the future. This afternoon, when I picked Evie up from school, she told me that the best part of the day was recess. The girls in her class started a "hopscotch club" and were planning on meeting to play hopscotch every day from now on.

We are still adjusting to life in a new city. We will always miss our friends and family and we have a ways to go still in creating a complete community for ourselves here, but with the recess issue resolved, I feel like all three of the girls are happy and that is a huge start to making Los Angeles feel like home.