We love our kids to smithereens, but every now and then, it does a mom good to escape from the family unit and regroup with the lady friends. And when those girlfriends are all rippers, Vail is the perfect getaway.
I can count the number of times on one hand that I’ve disentangled myself from the chaos of family life since the oldest of our three kids was born—17 years ago. This spring I made a rare escape for a girl’s trip to Vail. I spent two glorious days with four friends, all of whom happened to be journalists. It was our own private press trip.
Love these ladies. They have stories to tell, but their kids won’t let them finish a sentence.
Let’s face it, most moms’ worlds revolve around the kids, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But. But! It’s grounding to get away every once in a while. To be able to actually finish an entire sentence. A whole paragraph of spoken word uttered without being interrupted right smack in the middle.
“Mom. Mom…Mom!”
In the book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, there’s a scene where the all the kids are puking and pooping all night long. The mom, Vivi, can’t take it anymore. She puts on her ankle-length, cream-colored Givenchy Coat, gets in the car, and drives off for the Gulf Coast, where she checks into a nice hotel with bourbon, a hot bath, and clean sheets.
“I would go somewhere and start a new life where no one knew me. I would have no roots. I would leave my husband, my children, my mother, that pissant priest, even my best friends behind. I would wipe the slate clean and stand naked and try to find out who was there. I would look for Vivi Abbott, a missing person.”
I’ve often joked with my husband that when the kids are just too much to bear, I’m packing a bag and heading for the coast. I’ve never done it, naturally, but this girls’ getaway to Vail was the next best thing. We would have prosecco and clean sheets, and we would glimpse our own missing persons.
As a temp in San Francisco, Evelyn got to name turtlenecks and vests for the Gap. Who knew?
My friend Bevin wrote about our girls’ weekend in Vail on her blog, Real Life Delicious. (Read Bevin’s story here. ) She said she felt like the trip gave her the chance to recall life before we became defined by our kids.
“I know you. You’re Quinn’s mom, right?” I’ve been asked that question on more than one occasion. There’s more to us than driving to cello lessons, scheduling annual checkups with the pediatrician (which reminds me, I need to do that), and paying unpaid school fees. Before we were moms, we were newspaper reporters, magazine editors, PR mavens, authors, violinists, mountaineers, photographers.
Rachel trained thoroughbred racehorses for a year and Bevin was a publicist in NYC. Evelyn skied with reindeer herders in Mongolia and retraced the route of the Bataan Death March for a memorial event. Gina, who blogs at The Daily B, changed an American Girl Doll into a boy for her son who had asked for an “American Boy Doll” for his birthday. At the time, there was no such thing. The post she wrote about the gender-bending DIY project went viral. (PS: Mattel now makes American Boy Dolls. Go Gina.)
All of which is to say, these missing persons are incredibly interesting women.
We skied hard for two days, making laps in the Back Bowls and Blue Sky Basin, down runs like Forever and a route through the hardwoods that Bevin called Swiss Trees. I often have friends from the East visit, and we tool around on the greens as they acclimate to the altitude. But with this pack of diehards, we ripped. Steeps, trees, bumps, cornices, powder. We skied under bluebird skies till our thighs screamed uncle. We even found creamy untracked lines in the trees. We paused to admire the views and snap pictures of postcards featuring us. But mostly we caught up on the chairlift.
At the end of the first day, we tucked into Vail’s Tavern on the Square for a grown-up apres-ski cocktail. We ran into a friend who does PR for Portillo. She gave us drink tickets and pointed to the free buffet. Now our informal press trip was really rolling. There was a raffle for a free trip to Portillo, but none of us won it. We didn’t care. We were talking in full sentences! Dropping F-bombs! Talking smack about our husbands! It was fabulous.
Clean sheets, prosecco, engaging conversation, and powder-filled Back Bowls made for the perfect girls’ getaway.
Back at Bevin’s place in Eagle-Vail, we lingered in the kitchen, drinking prosecco and making dinner. No mac and cheese. No chicken fingers. No whining. Bevin, who is has a food blog and who teaches cooking classes, made us a delightful grain-free Pad Thai. One of us was in the midst of a Whole30 food challenge and one had recently discovered she has celiac disease. Bevin showed up with the fixings to accommodate all diets, as well as fresh sponges and cutting boards to make the prep and cleanup safe for the gluten-avoiders among us. It was nice to be on the receiving end of some nurturing.
Over dinner we shared stories of work, kids, gluten, the scourge of screen time, and the joy of skiing. We laughed until our sides nearly split. And you just can’t get a group of ladies around the table without the subject of spouses coming up. The conversation soon morphed into true confessions of work-at-home moms. Once the kids are all packed off to school, nobody likes the husband hanging around and putting his dirty dishes in the sink literally five minutes after we just finished cleaning up the kitchen from the morning bombplosion. We all need a little space.
Gina told us how she and her husband had set up a home office with desks right next to each other. [Collective gasp.] After about a week, they agreed to split days in the “office,” with each of them taking turns working at a coffee shop. Yeah, I get that.
After dinner, not a single one of us sneaked into the bathroom with her phone for 30 minutes with the sole purpose of getting out of cleaning duty.
Blue sky, powder, and ripping moms.
The next morning, Rachel whipped up a paleo-worthy veggie-and-egg scramble, and Bevin brought out a jar of homemade grain-free granola to go with fresh berries and yogurt. We huddled around mugs of high-test coffee and dished. And laughed.
And then we skied—as hard as we could until it was time to head home.
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