Meeting of the minds

Last night I went to my friend Wendy's house after dinner,as she had gathered a group of women for a "Girls Night In," where we could all sit together and listen to music and chat and drink wine...and drink wine.  Man, it's been a long time since I had a night on my own with no children and no husband even.  Talking with these women, all of whom have kids who swim with Wendy, about the trials and thrills of raising and loving our children in Barbados was thrilling.  I realized what I had been missing all this time.  Friends.  People to commiserate with.  Not bitch and complain about life, but to talk, work things out, mull things over thoughtfully and always, always maintain a sense of hope. 


I am a hopeful person.  Many times in my life I have lived with hope as my only guide through tough patches, even the roughest patches, and had lost that during those early months in Barbados.  I don't beat myself up.  Post partum, roving bands of monkeys and bugs the size of my eyelids would probably do that to many.  Add to that, new acquaintances who found little joy in their lives as my only contacts and one can imagine the hopelessness.  I can't live like that. 


Daphne, Edna, Vicki, Wendy, and Katie, my friend visiting from New York, and I represent a range of cultural and life experiences, yet we all spoke the common language of motherhood.  Daphne and Vicki are both Barbadian, Daphne as a transplant at four years old and Vicki born here but raised in the States and here.  Edna is German and has been in Barbados for eleven years.  Wendy is English and Katie and I rounded out the group, an Irish-American and African-American respectively.  Many of us have mixed children and the conversation about the Bajan take on our relationships and kids left us all in stitches.  Daphne, married to an Asian man from Trinidad, has been asked about her "Chine-y babies."  Vicki, Edna, and I have little girls with curly hair and brown skin and we often hear obsessive comments about their looks as though doing some sort of math problem to determine who they favor our husbands or us.  The answer is both.  They are ours.  Ours.

It felt so good to share.  To chat.  To laugh out loud again.  I left at 11:15, sure that Didier was worried about me, but more concerned that Virginie would wake up to nurse and find me gone.  The ladies continued into the night, the last leaving at 1:30 am!  With Lily's 5:45 wake up that would have given me just a little over four hours of sleep.  Forty is not the new twenty.  I have been recuperating all day and I was the first to leave, something I am completely unfamiliar with.  I hope we will do it again soon.  Maybe I will take a nap and stay out a little later than my bedtime next time.


(c) Copyright 2010.  City Mom in the Jungle.