the oakie house’s new year’s resolution is to spend thursday nights together, sharing a meal one week and praying together the next. since i missed last week’s thurs. evening prayer, it was especially great that jane, blue & i made time last night for a pre-babies girls’ night out.
we were thwarted in our effort to eat at domku, which is closed on monday nights, so we headed to the diner, which none of us had visited since we were younger, non-pregnant 20-somethings cooling off between adams morgan bars. we were very happy to find that the diner’s dinner fare is as great as their fries and shakes. plus, it was just great to be together.
the evening gave us the chance to have uninterrputed versions of the intimate talks that we only seem to have while we are multi-tasking in the kitchen — a room which, in our home, has been revived as that ancient space of female confession and friendship. call us cloistered, but roles in the marriages of these three wives (a firefighter, an outdoorswoman and an entrepreneur) have evolved so that we do the lion’s share of cooking and kitchen-related cleaning. for the most part, we enjoy/endure it. and we treasure the close conversations that the kitchen allows us.
so perhaps it was appropriate that we were seated near the diner’s fiery, clattering kitchen, our conversation punctuated by the laughter and catcalls of the kitchen staff. our joy in being together, and perhaps too, the cover of the cacophony, led us to talk fairly personally in a public space. it’s funny when you realize that the next-table dining patrons are staring over as you emphatically discuss the filioque and how it is impacting your personal prayer life. and then they’re staring again when you get into a discussion of how three families living under one roof gives new meaning to Jesus’ dictum: “judge not, that ye be not judged.”
they followed us home and lurked at our windows. just kidding.
we had a great night together and we even stayed out until 8:15, which i thought was pretty great for a gimp and two majorly pregnant women. we were so jazzed by our time that blue made homemade hot chocolate when we got home, and we hoped to take it up to her room and continue talking. but the small called, and lil l, who was miffed by her mother’s dinnertime exit, needed a bedtime story. so the three of us hugged each other good night and went our separate-but-nearby ways.
