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The importance of girls' night out
By Deborah Taylor-Hollis
While communication devices are getting more and more sophisticated, there are still areas that cannot be properly covered.
With the basic phone, you need to have a free space when the child isn't whining for another video, the washing machine isn't making "that loud rumble-clack-rumble thing" on the spin cycle, and you aren't feeling compelled to wash the dishes in the sink while you cradle the phone against your left shoulder blade and put your neck in the position that has made your chiropractor's summer vacation in Spain possible.
Using cell phones to hold long talks requires that you can drive, remember to stop by the post office for stamps, keep the kids in the back seat happy, find your favorite cassette tape after you spill the box on the floor, and still be able to yell at that OTHER idiot driver who isn't paying attention and cut you off because he is on HIS cell phone.
I've tried using email to keep in touch with several friends, but the messages end up looking like Post-Its. We can't remember who said what last, and are typing out a 20-minute tirade about "how my spouse fixed the bathroom door but left the shavings all over, the nuts and bolts in the tub and the open grease gun easily accessible to the 6-year-old." That takes more time than it is worth, so I just delete everything but forwarding jokes. I have a LOT of forwarded jokes from my friends now.
No, good old-fashioned, face-to-face, time-well-spent, listening-drinking-and-eating communication is a precious thing that needs to happen to keep friendships open. And trying to make it happen is an art in itself.
Two of my buddy moms and I make it a point to get together every 60 days or so, and the challenge is intense. Coordinating a free night with three families' busy schedules is more complex than Eisenhower coordinating D-Day ops on the five landing beaches at Normandy. With five children, three husbands, two grandmas, four schools, three sitters, two part-time and one full-time jobs between us, there are more hurdles than a 200-meter Olympics event. And the planning must be precise.
At each Girls Night Out (GNO on our calendars, a ruse to throw our families off the track) we bring our schedules for the next 90 days. First off, we try to shoot for one of the three weeknights that have been mutually agreed upon. Scanning down our lists, we eliminate all the religious holidays, school holidays, personal holidays and anniversaries. That shoots 20 of the 36 possibilities for any given three months.
Then we go to the next earliest date--and the excuses begin. I may have Friday the 15th open, but that's when Laura's sister comes to town. Next date. Try Thursday the 21st--nope, Rhonda's spouse will be out of town, she's out the night before, and none of us use sitters two nights in a row--it's not fair to our kids. Move on. Wednesday the 27th--can't do it, my son has a baseball game that night, etc., etc.
We need an entire three-month spectrum to find a date that looks good--not too close to relatives visiting, not so far off that we lose the thread of how chemotherapy is going, if the latest school is working out for a child, or if the husband has learned how to fix the RV air conditioning. We scour for dates that fit.
And then when we find one--even if it is PERFECT--we find a second one. Like Boy Scouts, we are always prepared with a backup plan. There's nothing like an emergency trip to the hospital, a change in PTA fundraiser dates, or a car in the shop to throw the proverbial monkey wrench into a meeting. The nightmare of trying to find a date by TELEPHONING each other (a chain of events similar to a nuclear reactor core meltdown) is too real and nerve-wracking to consider. So we always have a second date ready.
Once the two GNOs have been outlined, we can move on through dinner, coffee, getting thrown out of the restaurant when they close (we have NEVER left before they close in the three years of meeting like this) and then trying to find another coffee shop open. We don't tire of each other's company--not after midnight, not even, sometimes, after 1 in the morning. It doesn't matter that Rhonda goes to bed at 10, or that Laura needs to get up at 5. The time sharing, commiserating, laughing, is so hard to come by that we will move our GNO to a second location if we feel the need.
Usually that means ending up at the Cardinal for a second round of coffee and a few more bits and pieces of wildly spinning lives. Seeing their faces more than makes up for the schedule hassles--and sure beats email any day.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
