Ah, the beauty of fall is here bringing with it colorful leaves, pumpkins, hayrides and anything warm. If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, it’s filled with photos of mommy friends enjoying the fall holidays with their kids, boyfriends, and/or grandkids – but where are the men in those photos? Ask the ladies and you’ll get the familiar answer this season, “He’s hunting.” Early in the season, these responses are usually light and supportive. Ask the same mom in December, and the response is usually less enthusiastic, as she navigates yet another weekend alone, juggling family obligations and pending holiday bliss. For other friends, those same answers come in the summer months as they serve up hobbies like golf, softball, or fishing. If you’re one of the “lucky” ones, you find yourself a weekend widow most of the year that hosts all of the above, not to mention Sunday football games and March Madness.
If you’re sitting there shaking your head while reading this, I have to ask – what about you? So often, we women put the things we love to do on the back burner to take care of the ones we love. We run the kids to activities, make dinner, do the grocery shopping, planning, cleaning and caring and in the midst of it all, we forget to schedule time for ourselves. Why do our husbands have hobbies and we don’t? Why do they have an evening or two a week or month dedicated to doing something they love while we (sometimes bitterly) support them? Why is it that when we have something scheduled, like our bi-monthly hair appointment, we feel guilty about missing it? What is wrong with this picture?
About two years ago, after many conversations with like-minded moms, I began to think that maybe our husbands had it right all along. They are living the marital dream. They have a loving family, a good work life and spend time on the things they love. So why shouldn’t it work that way for us? My husband is a nice guy…if he enjoys a hobby or two, he would understand that I would enjoy the same, right? Would it require some inconvenient program changes on its behalf? Yes. Would it be worth it? Yes. Was it on the weekly golf course? Yes. Score for the home team?.
So it started, we started setting aside one night a week, in my case Thursdays, as “Mommy Night”. The kids understood (tears at first) that I, like their dad, would get one night a week to do things I enjoy and they would earn one night a week just with dad, including bedtime. (If the thought of that alone lowers your blood pressure, do us moms get it?). Initially I had no plans, nor did I want them. I wanted to live freely and go about my evenings willy-nilly like a single man with a house cat. Some nights I went to a fitness class that I learned to love, some nights I locked myself in a restaurant booth with a glass of wine and a good book, and other nights I enjoyed the pure bliss of unfettered roaming around Target without a list, schedule, or tag-along kids. As time went on, I became more willing to take my evenings off and started booking things I’d always wanted to do but never got around to, like meeting up with long-lost girlfriends, taking a pottery class, and to try my hand at flying trapeze (sounds crazy, right? It was and it was amazing!). Lately, I’ve been thinking about scheduling a recurring facial with a friend who, like me, has been struggling to step away from “me” for a while. We meet after work for dinner and then head to our favorite spa for a glass of wine and a relaxing facial surrounded by dim lights, essential oils and the sound of Enya playing softly in the background. Needless to say we sleep like the beauties we are on Thursday nights!
Over time I realized the added benefits of Mommy Nights, beyond the obvious. My husband has upped his game at home to include delicious dinners for the kids and a clean kitchen for me! The kids look forward to a night in with Daddy, which usually involves more leisurely bedtimes, and my husband has come to appreciate a calmer, happier wife who’s ready to relax and connect versus the normal half-breed who falls asleep at nine. . No matter how I spend my mommy nights, I always come home calmer, happier and more appreciative of the ones I love, which leads me to you. If you had one night a week or even a month to start, what would you do? Whatever it is, you definitely deserve it!
