Old friends

First, we named our muffin tops. This is what old friends who haven't seen each other in years and who find themselves in a tiny town in Mexico at a knitting retreat do. Christen the growth spurt between the belly button and the hips. You know. That general area that has become de riguer to show off with low cut jeans and clingy tops short on real estate. Mine was called Sylvia, and Valerie's was Fredo, after the ill fated, doofus brother of Michael Corleone. Christina dubbed hers Blanche, for reasons unexplained, although she is a bit of a literary snob.

We ate, we drank, we lay on our beds gossiping and roaring in hilarity about former colleagues and things that were not so funny when they happened years ago (like when I delivered a swift uppercut to the gut of my rental horse when he refused to cross Amsterdam Avenue en route to Central Park for a "relaxing trail ride." But that's another story).

My friends don't have kids, and they marveled that I went days without checking in at home. That was a conscious decision on my part (like not calling Daycare two minutes after you've left your screaming child there) but I let them think I had everything inexplicably under control. Did I miss my kids? After a couple days, yes. But those first two days - sleeping, eating and walking on my own schedule? It was like I had never had them, I'm ashamed to say.

But rest assured, by day 5 I was feeling like a Bad Celebrity Mother, drinking magaritas and getting pedicures while my kids fell under the dubious care of someone else (their father).

And the first thing I did when I got home at midnight after twelve hours of travel was tiptoe into their rooms to hear them breathe, watch them dream, and will them, with all my heart, to stop growing so damn fast.