It started out as a day like any other.  Except as the afternoon approached and then the evening, the email arrived.  Sent by a fellow mum, the email said that she’d been thinking about how we mums rarely get the opportunity to let our hair down together without the saplings and that in the next couple years, as our mini-me’s graduate to big kid school, we’ll probably see less of each other.  And rarely may turn into never. 

Never?  Unthinkable, unless one of us was forced to move to Timbuktu or Nar Nar Goon.  This email served as the initiation of what has become our mums’ monthly “learn-things-we-never-knew-about-one-another-while-laughing-‘til-our-bellies-ache-and-our-eyes-are-filled-with-tears-and-living-it-up-as-if-we-don’t-actually-have-to-wake-up-at-6am-to-‘mummy, mummy, mummy’” evenings. 

I’ve enjoyed our first three get-togethers immensely, and I always anticipate the next.  They remind us mums to remember ourselves, something we so easily forget to do while being a mother, partner, friend, and workmate.  

Our first mamapalooza was at one of the mum’s homes.  As we sat around the table eating her homemade yummies and charcuterie courtesy of a fantastic tapas restaurant and drinking wine, we talked about anything and everything.  We discussed the Royal Wedding and how it made us think of our own weddings and honeymoons.  I told the gals how I crashed on the back of a motorcycle hours before my wedding in Greece (which in my mind means I’m not legally married because I said my vows while on painkillers and wasn’t completely “there”), and one of my closest friends responded, “Lisha, I’ve known you for all these years, and I never knew you got married in Greece!”.  What I find funny is that she could probably tell you the type of nappies/diapers I used, the brand of baby wipes, the snacks my son most prefers, how my son’s potty training went, whether or not my son has had chicken pox yet, and what superhero my son most wants to be, but she never knew this.  We oohed and aahed over one another’s honeymoons, and I told them that due to my crash and subsequent pill-popping, my honeymoon kicked off with a game of Scrabble and some sleep, nothing more. 

We talked about who bid for Olympics tickets, art shows, and the more interesting Japanese sex fetishes.  Yikes.  Now those are some fetishes.  And eventually we said good night, and I walked home pensive, listening to Procol Harum.  You see, my husband and I walked down the aisle (read: I limped down the cliff) to Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale”. 

The second matriarch social summit was at Kitchen Club in Soho.  One of the mums organised the evening for us, and we had the venue and the chef all to ourselves.  My palate did cartwheels, my belly handstands, and I still drool when I think of the kablik tatlisi with cream.  But, as was the case during the previous dinner, the conversation was the highlight.  We couldn’t help but talk a bit about pregnancy and labour, nannies and babysitters, and schools, but the good substance started after we had a few glasses.  I learned that marriage counselling exists even in the healthiest of unions, but perhaps more importantly, I received a lesson in geometry – one friend intimately described the difference between a Hollywood and a Brasilian while using her fingers to demonstrate geometric shapes.  And I was educated on vajazzle.  Really?  With rhinestones? (a day later, there was mention from one mom of a possible penazzle). 

 And the most recent Girls Gone Wild Without Their Wee Ones night out, organised by yours truly, involved nameless Lithuanian drug dealers, pills dissolving on our tongues and poo that powered the making of our meal.  Courtesy of my friend Abi, who runs Rambling Restaurant, currently a cafe/restaurant out of a decommissioned ambulance in the Urban Physic Garden, we enjoyed a nice meal outdoors with about 20 other strangers.  I think we’d all agree that the highlight of the meal was the miracle pills which – after dissipating in our mouths – made sour lemons, limes and rhubarb taste like sweet somethings.   I don’t know about the other gals, but after I took my pill, I could swear I had visions of Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary doing a moondance around our fire pit.  As we mums all talked about how great the smell and crackling sounds of the “campfire” were, one mum decided to ask one of our hosts who her miracle pill dealer was, to which she responded, “A nameless Lithuanian.  I give him money, he gives me the stuff in a bag.”  On a serious note, these pills are frequently given to patients undergoing chemotherapy as it eliminates the metallic taste in their mouths that they often experience while undergoing treatment. 

To add to what was already a relatively surreal experience, I found myself requesting gherkins from our hosts; I was eager to test their power against this miracle pill.  I was sucking on one as another mum told how she just read in the loo that our meal was powered by poo.  Yes, this was the night I almost choked on a gherkin.  Ahem.  Apparently, the pill hadn’t made her hallucinate.  The toilet does actually package poo and wee into a cartridge, and the cartridge is emptied into an anaerobic digester. The digester converts human waste into natural gas and fertilizer.  And then, as is typical after dinner, we were offered popping candy.  Yes, popping candy.  I ate a whole pack of the apple flavour myself and loved every minute of it. 

On our way home, I vowed to buy myself more popping candy and not to ever introduce it to my son for fear that he wouldn’t share the fizzing fun.  And, because the fire pit reminded me of roasted marshmallows – the “meal” I “cooked” the first night I stayed in my very own apartment – to buy some marshmallows and when my son’s old enough, roast them on the hob with him.  

I thought of how much I adore these friends, these fellow mums.  And of how much these evenings allow us to remember times pre-children.  Times that perhaps some of us feel guilty wanting back because it somehow equates to not wanting our little ones.  Reminiscing about these moments in no shape or form means we want to give our children back in order to regain such moments; it means our children are lucky to have mums who have had and will continue to have rich lives – who have, I learned, eaten seeds straight from the sunflowers, who have had the most romantic marriage proposals, whose father is a part-time beekeeper, who likes the Beatles song “Something”.  These are mums who have stories to tell and who intend to teach their children to grab life by the collar. 

For a few hours, we have a chance to be gals who are not just mums.  Since the first dinner was initiated, one mum has moved to another country, one mum has given birth and another has separated from her husband.  But one thing remains constant – mums’ night out.  And the next one I’m told involves dancing.  Time to shake what my mama gave me.