LADIES WHO LUNCH

Yes please...And stop judging!

Today was a wonderful day!

My husband played golf, which is nothing new on a Monday holiday afternoon … but I went out for lunch with a friend I haven’t seen in ages, which is something new. My typical lunch on a Monday is spent hunched over a Tupperware dish at my desk. Actually, my typical lunch most days of the week is spent in that position.

That’s what made today so fun. It was so nice to put on a frilly dress and sit without staring at my computer screen between bites, without checking my watch, and without a concern in the world. Our lunch was just what a lunch date should be, and not just because we were day drinking. As we were finishing up, we vowed to do it again soon.

On the way home, I remembered a quote from a movie. I think Sandra Bullock said it in The Blindside. A great movie, by the way. I let it play anytime it pops up when I’m scrolling. What I was remembering was that she said “Ladies Who Lunch” as a putdown. That Ladies Who Lunch wasn’t a good thing, and certainly not something to aspire to.

I was hoping that I remembered it wrong, so I asked Google! That’s what we do whenever a thought comes to mind, right? Google it. Well, that’s what I do. I’ve heard everyone else has moved on to AI and ChatGPT.

And of course, Google sent me to Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, “Ladies Who Lunch is a phrase often used to describe well-off, well-dressed women who meet for social luncheons, usually during the working week.” Well, that doesn’t sound too bad. But then it went on to say, "The Ladies Who Lunch is a song that mockingly judges rich and wealthy women who waste their middle-aged lives doing nothing meaningful.”

Yuck! Hold on while I look up that song … it was composed by Stephen Sondheim in 1970 for the Broadway musical Company. Now hold on while I listen to the song … Well, that was a deep dive!

I ended up watching the two-hour musical on YouTube. The version I watched starred Doogie Houser (Neil Patrick Harris) as the 35-year-old bachelor who is ambivalent about marriage and asks his married friends, “What do you get?” In his book Finishing the Hat, Sondheim talked about his lyrics and said that he drew inspiration from “the challenge of maintaining relationships in a society becoming increasingly depersonalized.” He said that in 1970! It makes you think!

Funny how those rabbit holes work, Just last week, I had a note  taped to the refrigerator asking “What do you want?”  … which is practically synonymous with, “What do you get?”

But that’s not the part of resurfacing from the rabbit hole that inspired me the most. It was the part about relationships. Once the kids left the house, I no longer had built-in companions for my fun days! Yes, my husband is still here, but take another look at my first sentence to see where he spends his fun days. It became all too easy to spend days alone.

Relationships don’t just happen. They take care and feeding … and what better way to accomplish that than to go out to lunch! So, pooh – pooh on you, Sandra Bullock.

I, for one, am happy to be included in the group of ladies who lunch.  

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash