When mom’s away, the moms will play

My Moldy White Bitches

And the struggle to re-acclimate to family life after a mom-cation

Girl’s trip. Mom-cation. Moms away. Moms out. Whatever cute name we want to call it, a trip away from family and the monotony of day-to-day life as a mom is a rare and wonderful thing. A thing to be celebrated and cherished and then stashed away in the ever-growing collection of distant, treasured memories.

I recently took one such mom-cation in the form of a long weekend in New York with some of my oldest, dearest friends. We are all moms, living in different places, dealing with different things, in various stages of mom-hood. One thing we all share is the need for an escape and the opportunity to let our hair down.

So that is exactly what we did, with style and martinis, in the Big Apple. Our weekend was amazing. For starters, we went to a comedy show and got heckled by JB Smoove. We were seated in the second row, came in late, and goddamn we were an easy target. He called us moldy white bitches, told us to sit our white asses down, and I am definitely adding that to my resume. We laughed hysterically for the next hour, because even moldy white bitches have a sense of humor.

After the comedy show, we headed to the once/maybe still trendy Meatpacking district for a very late dinner (late for a group of middle-aged, suburban moms). We ate red meat, drank red wine and ordered multiple desserts. We laughed and collectively exhaled. We were out and we were free.

As the meal concluded, we started to discuss our next destination. Our waiter, a direct gift from the fun gods, shimmied as he told us which clubs to try. “Wait, we’re actually going out after this?!? What the what?!?” We were excited, confused, and tired. We don’t go out. Ever. Our evenings mostly consist of wrangling young children and forcing them against their mighty wills to bathe and go to bed, only to face a kitchen full of dirty dishes and lunches to pack for the next day. We’re lucky if we watch 15 minutes of garbage TV. Most of the time we collapse into our beds next to our equally exhausted spouses.

Not this night. The night was young, for New York at least, so we carpe diem’d the shit out of it. We went to an actual nightclub and somehow talked our way to the front of the line, cutting in front of a group of beautiful blondes, half our age. What the F just happened here. We’ll never know, but we went in and danced our middle-aged, white, moldy booties off.

When our feet could no longer stand the pain of the shoes we forced ourselves into, we left. And then we went to another club for no good reason, and talked our way to the front of the line, again. No money exchanged hands. I honestly think the bouncers felt sorry for us. Look at these ladies. They look so tired. They deserve a fun night out, so why the heck not. Or maybe we just have an air of ‘I don’t give a fuckery’. Who knows. We went in, danced some more, and left after three minutes because our feet were screaming mad at this point.

We giggled like school girls on our way back to the lovely apartment we were staying in, and went to bed laughing. When was the last time you went to bed laughing? Seriously. Think about it. It was glorious.

The next day was a non-stop shopping extravaganza on Madison Ave with some food and booze lightly sprinkled in, followed by more shopping in Soho and a lovely dinner at a far more reasonable hour. More laughing, some crying, and more laughing again. That’s how it goes with friends you’ve known for 27+ years.

The next morning I had to get up for my return flight home. I decided to come home early enough to see my kids before bedtime. Why would I do such a thing? Why did the bouncers let us into their clubs ahead of hotter, younger club-goers? Add to the expanding list of life’s great mysteries.

My kids were so amped to see me — thank you, thank you; bedtime got pushed back 90 minutes, resulting in a very tired, exasperated mom, and two overly tired boys who were very late for school the next day. Actually they were very late every single day for a week.

Things felt absurdly difficult on the home front. I was confused. I felt like I was coming down from ecstasy, but no pills entered this body. We didn’t even drink that much. We were completely moderate in every sense of the word. Yet I felt like I’d returned from a week-long bender in Vegas after doing all the things.

It was reminiscent of returning from your honeymoon, all giddy from the wedding, an amazing trip coupled with newlywed bliss — only to find yourself back at work with 6,856 emails to sort through and more meetings to attend than the President on the brink of war. You think to yourself, really? That’s it? It’s just back to reality??

No one cares that you’re back from your honeymoon or asks what your favorite drink was. All they care about is that you’re finally back to do all of the things that need doing.

All of my chores were there, eagerly awaiting my return — and my kids had basically stockpiled their demands for me. How very sweet.

I exchanged text after text with my friends and turns out we were all struggling. Profoundly. Did we do drugs and not remember? Did we drink more than we thought? Why do we all feel so awful?

Then it hit us. The trip was a reminder of days lost, our carefree lives pre-kids, of late nights without consequences, a fleeting sense of who we were before becoming moms. The weekend was simply too much fun, and now we were paying a price.

The feeling left me with more questions than answers. Are our lives as moms that devoid of fun? What’s the solution? Do we embark on a less fun trip in the future? We tossed out ideas of library conventions and antique shows. How do we make these trips less fun so the re-entry into domesticity is less jarring?

I came home to the daunting task of putting together a Christopher Columbus costume for my third grader. It was a stretch, but his teacher told me he said I’m “the best” for helping him with his costume. I’ll fucking take that.

One friend burned the shit out of her face making dinner for her family. Like she has an actual burn mark. Another came home to the overwhelming chore of preparing her home to be staged for selling, and another came home to a spiteful dog who shat on her new carpet while looking her dead in the eye. No fun deed goes unpunished.

Returning to the monotony of the daily grind is hard, but these moldy, white bitches are a resilient bunch. We’ll get through it and will again become immune to the grind, more or less. We’ll plan our next trip soon and it won’t be to a library convention or antique show. In the meantime, maybe we all just need to see more comedy shows and fall asleep laughing from time to time.