Six Saturdays from now is blocked off on my calendar. Well, all of my calendars: the work one, the personal one, and the one I share with my children’s father. There are few details on that calendar entry; all it says is “Ladies’ Night.” It started off as “Girls’ Night,” but then I got a reality check and realized that no one in my motley group of friends could legitimately be called a “girl” anymore, so Ladies’ Night it is. The idea for this night out on the town started approximately six months ago, during one of those rare phone conversations with a friend I haven’t seen in ages. At the end of the call, one of us said something like “we have to get together for dinner and a movie sometime.” That’s where it started, but it’s taken six months to get six weeks away from the actual date. In between then and now, we’ve had the scheduling changes due to the following: a ruptured appendix (her husband), a broken toe (one child), work commitments (everyone), three colds, one case of pinkeye, and a hurricane. That’s right, a natural disaster. Somehow, during all of that chaos, we’ve both managed to reschedule every child, spouse, and work event, but Ladies’ Night keeps getting pushed back.
I know we will eventually fit in the dinner and a movie; I’m not so worried about that. But this gets me thinking about a much bigger issue, which is: why do we (moms, women) put our needs so far below the needs of every other person in our lives? When did work become more important than rest? When did we become the keeper of everyone’s schedule and everyone’s medical needs? When did every other adult in our lives become incapable of maintaining their own lives without our intervention?
If you thought I was going to give you the answers, you’re wrong. I don’t have the answers (as demonstrated by my six-week-away Ladies’ Night). But I do know that my friend didn’t seem to find it strange that our plans changed at the last minute. It was expected and business-as-usual. A sad state of affairs, Ladies. A sad state of affairs.
