Blissful weekend.
Sep. 29th, 2008 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaThis weekend I left my home and my family and went off into the wilds of Virginia to hang out with my friends, completely and utterly without responsibilities. It was AWESOME.
The six of us have been planning this since SUUSI.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bosssio, Brenna, Daria, Molly, Lo, and me, all Unitarian-Universalists, all mothers of kids ranging in age from -4 months (i.e., the Niblet) to eight. We love spending time together at SUUSI, but we also wanted to carve out some all-women, all-adult space. So the Wild Woman Weekend was born.
When I say "wild," you have to understand that we are all mothers and Sunday School teachers (present or former) who are fast approaching middle age. We tooled around in a minivan and gave serious consideration to going to church on Sunday morning. Theology was discussed. A recommended-reading list was compiled. But for me, at least, it felt a little wild just to go away for my own enjoyment, rather than for something improving like a work conference or OWL training. Just for grownup fun.
We met in Charlottesville, which is approximately the halfway point between Baltimore (me) and Blacksburg (Molly). We had Pricelined three rooms at the Comfort Inn, a nice upscale motel with comfortable, tastefully-decorated rooms and make-your-own-Belgian-waffles at the breakfast buffet. (I am always amused to see that nice motels give away for free what expensive business hotels make you pay for. We had free breakfast, free wireless, and capacious refrigerators in our rooms.)
Charlottesville has a long, lovely pedestrian mall lined with shops, restaurants, cafes, and galleries. It's pretty much the only part of Charlottesville we saw. We started off the weekend there at a place called Revolutionary Soups. I had some excellent crab and corn chowder, a turkey bacon wrap, and, um, half of Lo's sandwich. I had not really anticipated the sudden onset of the ZOMG-Pregnant-Need-To-Eat-Everything-In-The-World phase, but there it was.
We were all very happy to see each other. There was a lot of raucous laughter and gratuitous hugging. Pretty much everywhere we went that weekend, we felt like we changed the tone of the room.
After lunch, we wandered along the ped mall and wound up in a fantastic used bookstore. I came upon Lo and Molly sitting in the children's section and chided them for thinking about their kids on the Wild woman Weekend. They just laughed and moved over so I could get in there too. One of the best children's sections I've seen in a used bookstore, actually. We all bought stacks of books. I was excited to findbosssio a copy of the Norton Book of Women's Lives, which every woman should own.
From the bookshop we walked down to the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, a vaguely Turkish cafe where you can smoke a hookah in the back room or sit up front on embroidered pillows and drink tea from tiny low tables. Guess which one we chose. I chose an oolong called Jade Ti Guan Yin, sort of at random, because I was attracted by the translation of the name as "Iron Goddess of Mercy." The waiter, who seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of tea, gave a pleased sigh when I ordered it. And in fact, wow, it may have been the best tea I've ever had: light, clear, complex, subtle, incredibly refreshing. While I was downing the entire pot I didn't stop to consider that it was the first caffeine I'd had in months. I felt very... alert.
We spent a couple of hours there in the tea shop. The conversation ranged from funny to deeply serious and painful, and I loved how comfortable we could be together in both modes. We went back to the hotel, checked into our rooms, talked and talked and talked some more, and headed out for dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant with belly dancing. The belly dancing turned out to be a fairly short (20 minutes, maybe?) performance accompanied by live drumming and recorded music. I am not an expert, but it seemed fairly impressive, especially when she danced with a couple of long thin canes balanced on her head. I had some very very good lamb. Everyone else split a bottle of wine. We talked again some more, at length, mostly on the more serious end of the spectrum. I felt very safe. And cherished.
We attempted, with little success, to walk off dinner. Spent some time looking in the window of the ice rink trying to figure out what game is played without skates, using little rakes and a ball. (Broomball?) Hung out in the dark on the ped mall and talked. Drove back to the hotel, piled on the beds in one of the rooms, opened another bottle of wine and a bottle of Italian soda and a tub of chocolate peanut butter malted milk balls. Talked. Compiled a recommended-reading list for the weekend. Dissected our churches and our kids and our marriages and our families of origin.
Around 1am, I noticed that Brenna had slipped all the way down in bed and was lying with her eyes closed, smiling to show that she was still listening. I suggested that we move out of the room and let her sleep. Molly went to bed too. Everyone else followed me into our room, where we stayed up for another two hours talking even yet still some more. Thank you, Jade Ti Guan Yin. When we reached the topic of hilarious funeral stories, we decided that we should probably go to bed. It was 3am.
Slept badly. Woke up for good at nine even though there was no child to tend to. Siobhan and I hit the hotel breakfast buffet, where we felt a trifle out of place - Fox News was blaring on the widescreen TV, and the people all seemed to be, um, decidedly not UUs. So we took our food back to our room, where Molly and Brenna joined us. The conversation took an obstetric turn for a good long fascinating while, including a play-by-play of a vaginal breech delivery, which, whoa. Eventually we showered and dressed and went back to the ped mall for coffee followed by, um, what I guess I would have to call Second Breakfast, around lunchtime. We talked, reluctantly but as if we were compelled, about the shooting in the Knoxville UU church and the earlier shooting in Blacksburg.
And then it was time to leave, because I'd promised Michael and Alex that I would be home by dinnertime. So we hugged, and made promises for next time, and drove away.
It was an amazing weekend. Obviously I can't write about the intensest parts here, because they involved the sharing of pain and secrets and the loving response of friends. But the atmosphere of trust, cameraderie, and shared values was so good, and filled a deep hunger I barely knew I had. It was such a long, extended period of uninterrupted communication and connection. No kids' needs, no mundane responsibilities, no pull of other friends or activities.
Just six women, and love, and plenty of time.
The six of us have been planning this since SUUSI.
bosssio, Brenna, Daria, Molly, Lo, and me, all Unitarian-Universalists, all mothers of kids ranging in age from -4 months (i.e., the Niblet) to eight. We love spending time together at SUUSI, but we also wanted to carve out some all-women, all-adult space. So the Wild Woman Weekend was born.When I say "wild," you have to understand that we are all mothers and Sunday School teachers (present or former) who are fast approaching middle age. We tooled around in a minivan and gave serious consideration to going to church on Sunday morning. Theology was discussed. A recommended-reading list was compiled. But for me, at least, it felt a little wild just to go away for my own enjoyment, rather than for something improving like a work conference or OWL training. Just for grownup fun.
We met in Charlottesville, which is approximately the halfway point between Baltimore (me) and Blacksburg (Molly). We had Pricelined three rooms at the Comfort Inn, a nice upscale motel with comfortable, tastefully-decorated rooms and make-your-own-Belgian-waffles at the breakfast buffet. (I am always amused to see that nice motels give away for free what expensive business hotels make you pay for. We had free breakfast, free wireless, and capacious refrigerators in our rooms.)
Charlottesville has a long, lovely pedestrian mall lined with shops, restaurants, cafes, and galleries. It's pretty much the only part of Charlottesville we saw. We started off the weekend there at a place called Revolutionary Soups. I had some excellent crab and corn chowder, a turkey bacon wrap, and, um, half of Lo's sandwich. I had not really anticipated the sudden onset of the ZOMG-Pregnant-Need-To-Eat-Everything-In-The-World phase, but there it was.
We were all very happy to see each other. There was a lot of raucous laughter and gratuitous hugging. Pretty much everywhere we went that weekend, we felt like we changed the tone of the room.
After lunch, we wandered along the ped mall and wound up in a fantastic used bookstore. I came upon Lo and Molly sitting in the children's section and chided them for thinking about their kids on the Wild woman Weekend. They just laughed and moved over so I could get in there too. One of the best children's sections I've seen in a used bookstore, actually. We all bought stacks of books. I was excited to find
bosssio a copy of the Norton Book of Women's Lives, which every woman should own.From the bookshop we walked down to the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, a vaguely Turkish cafe where you can smoke a hookah in the back room or sit up front on embroidered pillows and drink tea from tiny low tables. Guess which one we chose. I chose an oolong called Jade Ti Guan Yin, sort of at random, because I was attracted by the translation of the name as "Iron Goddess of Mercy." The waiter, who seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of tea, gave a pleased sigh when I ordered it. And in fact, wow, it may have been the best tea I've ever had: light, clear, complex, subtle, incredibly refreshing. While I was downing the entire pot I didn't stop to consider that it was the first caffeine I'd had in months. I felt very... alert.
We spent a couple of hours there in the tea shop. The conversation ranged from funny to deeply serious and painful, and I loved how comfortable we could be together in both modes. We went back to the hotel, checked into our rooms, talked and talked and talked some more, and headed out for dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant with belly dancing. The belly dancing turned out to be a fairly short (20 minutes, maybe?) performance accompanied by live drumming and recorded music. I am not an expert, but it seemed fairly impressive, especially when she danced with a couple of long thin canes balanced on her head. I had some very very good lamb. Everyone else split a bottle of wine. We talked again some more, at length, mostly on the more serious end of the spectrum. I felt very safe. And cherished.
We attempted, with little success, to walk off dinner. Spent some time looking in the window of the ice rink trying to figure out what game is played without skates, using little rakes and a ball. (Broomball?) Hung out in the dark on the ped mall and talked. Drove back to the hotel, piled on the beds in one of the rooms, opened another bottle of wine and a bottle of Italian soda and a tub of chocolate peanut butter malted milk balls. Talked. Compiled a recommended-reading list for the weekend. Dissected our churches and our kids and our marriages and our families of origin.
Around 1am, I noticed that Brenna had slipped all the way down in bed and was lying with her eyes closed, smiling to show that she was still listening. I suggested that we move out of the room and let her sleep. Molly went to bed too. Everyone else followed me into our room, where we stayed up for another two hours talking even yet still some more. Thank you, Jade Ti Guan Yin. When we reached the topic of hilarious funeral stories, we decided that we should probably go to bed. It was 3am.
Slept badly. Woke up for good at nine even though there was no child to tend to. Siobhan and I hit the hotel breakfast buffet, where we felt a trifle out of place - Fox News was blaring on the widescreen TV, and the people all seemed to be, um, decidedly not UUs. So we took our food back to our room, where Molly and Brenna joined us. The conversation took an obstetric turn for a good long fascinating while, including a play-by-play of a vaginal breech delivery, which, whoa. Eventually we showered and dressed and went back to the ped mall for coffee followed by, um, what I guess I would have to call Second Breakfast, around lunchtime. We talked, reluctantly but as if we were compelled, about the shooting in the Knoxville UU church and the earlier shooting in Blacksburg.
And then it was time to leave, because I'd promised Michael and Alex that I would be home by dinnertime. So we hugged, and made promises for next time, and drove away.
It was an amazing weekend. Obviously I can't write about the intensest parts here, because they involved the sharing of pain and secrets and the loving response of friends. But the atmosphere of trust, cameraderie, and shared values was so good, and filled a deep hunger I barely knew I had. It was such a long, extended period of uninterrupted communication and connection. No kids' needs, no mundane responsibilities, no pull of other friends or activities.
Just six women, and love, and plenty of time.
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Date: 2008-09-30 03:01 am (UTC)