Here we are, already at Weekend No. 3! I started this four weekend series with No. 1, celebrating the kids. Then yesterday covered No. 2, family time!
Today, I’m talking about a favorite topic: GIRLFRIENDS! Weekend No. 3 was a much needed, much overdue girls trip.
I won’t get into the details of how it totally came together last minute for me, or how a friend of mine invited me even though I didn’t know the other women on the trip.
What I will say is that it was absolutely perfect. Six women. All within about a decade in age (with me being the senior citizen). All working momma lawyers. But even more, deep women of faith, with great interests, varied musical tastes, and a love of wine and coffee.
These were my people.
The crazy thing is, this is the only weekend that would have even worked. October is mayhem with work and sports and birthdays. But early one Friday morning, I hopped on a flight using my frequent flyer miles, and zipped up to Northern California for a weekend in Sonoma, my favorite part of wine country.
I really think we could have plopped down anywhere though.
We ate great food, drank great wine, and had important conversations about careers and societal issues and parenting and love and faith and more.
I feel like the theme of each of these four posts is uninterrupted.
Life, most days, is a series of constant interruptions. This time was uninterrupted. We didn’t have to pick a restaurant our kids would enjoy. We didn’t have to run interference for a fight (with kids or clients). No eating in a hurry at our desk.
Nope. It was leisurely. All planned out. We just showed up at each stop. Ate, drank, laughed and talked. In long unhurried segments of time.
I woke up in the morning and took my coffee and phone outside to a massive backyard overlooking a vineyard. I put my favorite praise music on the phone and sat. Took deep breaths. Ingested the beauty. Absorbed the peace.
We don’t do this. Especially we working mommas. We’re notoriously terrible at this. We’ll go years without sitting still. Even today, writing this post, I am MAKING myself sit at my computer while the kids are out on a Sunday afternoon. I have a ton of things to do but I really want to write. Love to write.
But there’s no time. To take deep breaths. To have deep thoughts.
Then we went out. To great dinners (highly recommend The Girl and The Fig). To great vineyards (highly recommend Repris for the experience and Merry Edwards for the pinot). We listened to 90s country and sang songs I didn’t even know I knew. I laughed so much. I don’t laugh nearly as much as I used to and I’m going to work on that.
This weekend was a gift. At a time that could not have been more perfect. Right before a major life change. Right before the frenzied holiday season, full of goodness but also chaos.
The women were a gift. Each of them was interesting, thoughtful, beautiful, funny, insightful, gracious, and really pretty fabulous. We just got together again this week to catch up and celebrate our shipment of wine by cracking some open.
I did nothing to deserve such a gorgeous, joy-filled weekend away, but I’m overwhelmingly, unspeakable grateful for its coming.
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