girl's side of the playground

a friend of mine is starting a monthly dinner for women of color, mostly of her friends. an interesting contrast to Leny's dinner with some white women.

i do enjoy hanging out with my women friends. most of the week i'm surrounded by men: at work, in kali class. i do enjoy hanging out with the guys; it's something i've done since i was a kid, being into sports and all. but it is nice, to hang with the girls once in a while. for most of us, busy in careers and families, we are carried off in our lives leaving us little time to hang out anymore, especially with our girlfriends.

when there are enough women (3 or more) in my teacher's kali class, he tends to separate us to one side of the class, which we've dubbed "girl's side of the playground." his theory is that if the women play with each other, then we get a better understanding of how our movement and energy work, since in being in predominantly male environments tends to pull us towards the male energy. we all love the "girl's side of the playground." it's a kinder and gentler side, since we don't rely on muscle to get techniques to work, we don't force the issue.

some of the male partner's of the women there wanted to stop by or drop them off, just to see what the women are talking about. this too happens in class, the guys always want to know what the women are giggling about. the SO understands the need for women-time and has always encouraged me to go, never inviting himself along. he's a good guy that way. sometimes he remembers more often than i do, that there's something vital to having the girltime.

anyway, the dinner was like being in the "girl's side of the playground." no boys allowed. which allowed us to talk about our mothers, how they both keep our sanity and drive us insane with comments about our weight and setting us up on "dates." we know that the "dates" are probably going to be horrible, but we go anyway, because we know it makes mom happy being a part of our lives somehow.

with no boys allowed, it meant we could talk about the boys (and the girls) in our lives. how we cope and handle these relationships. we talked too about motherhood, whether we felt ready or not and what kinds of things seemed to keep us from there. those that had kids talked about how they manage to keep up with their careers.

there's something safe about being on the "girl's side of the playground," a feeling that what you say isn't totally nuts, and the laughter and tears generated comes from a deeper understanding of shared experiences, that somewhere deep inside, it's ok to be who we are. there's a sense of conspiracy to it all, especially when we exchange ideas on how to deal with our SOs. or how we discuss how the feminist movement isn't something that we totally agree with.

we started the meal, mostly as strangers, yet looking forward to seeing each other again at the next gathering, leaving with hugs and warm goodbyes.