If it's true that laughter is the best medicine, then, after this past Saturday night, I'm going to live a long, long time. I got that rare treat for moms everywhere: a night out with the girls. Just the girls, and only the girls.
It's been two days, and I still get a little misty thinking about it.
I got to get dressed up, gussied up, fussed up and fancied up while my husband fed the kids. I even got to take a bath completely by myself, without anyone asking me, 742 times in a row “Mommy, what are you doing? What are you doing, Mommy?” I put on lipstick without a three-year-old vamp at my feet demanding “Mommy, I need stiplick!”
At 7:00 p.m., I walked out the front door, dressed up and smelling like a grown-up, alone. By myself. Without anyone else. Compared to how I usually leave the house, I lost about 60 pounds, or two blonde appendages.
It was all I could do not to skip down the sidewalk as I walked to my girlfriend Bethany's house. Had I not been wearing shockingly stiletto, very un-mommy shoes, I likely would have skipped. (Note: I got to wear shoes! Real, girl shoes! Really high shoes! And I didn't have to carry anyone while I was wearing them!)
After an hour or so of some semi-serious primping, several wardrobe changes and some minor giggling as a warm up, we left the house. Ahhh, picture it - me, Bethany and Barbara, all mothers of two, with no children. We left in a convertible. A really, shiny, black one. It's the kind of car that makes you very, very pretty, just sitting in it. Excuse me. I'm getting a little teary eyed, again, just thinking about it.
We laughed and we laughed, and we laughed some more. We sang and we danced, and we laughed some more. People were starting to stare at us, because we were laughing so much and so hard.
I wouldn't take anything, not anything in the world, for my family. My husband is a prince among men and my children are perfect. Being a wife and a mother is by far the most satisfying thing I have ever done, and I am totally content.
But.
There is something about spending time with my girlfriends that brings back the old me, the fun me, the me who only wore clothes that had to be dry-cleaned because I couldn't be bothered with doing laundry. An hour or two in the company of really good girlfriends reminds me that I used to be funny, that I used to be fun, that I used to only cook to impress dates, and then only in extreme cases.
Spending time with my girlfriends takes me back to the time when my most pressing worry was whether I would have to wait until the next payday to buy the fabulous red shoes, or if I could squeeze my budget somehow and get them now. It takes me back to the me that once thought I might be a novelist, or a lawyer, or maybe president.
My girlfriends remind me that before I was a wife and a mother, I was a person.
And best of all, being with really good friends makes me grateful that I am married to a man I adore with the most perfect set of twins ever created.
I woke up on Sunday morning with the most splendid kind of hangover: my face and my stomach muscles ached - from laughing. And so did my feet, from the monstrous heels.
It was worth it.
