Bad Girls Book Club

I went to book club last night.  It was at Mal’s apartment, in the city.  We ate tilapia with sweet potato mash and the most delicious salad with homemade dressing.  We sat around Mal’s coffee table and drank wine and after the dinner plates were cleared we devoured chocolate pudding made from scratch and strawberries. 

For the last five and a half years I’ve met every month with my book club.  I started the club the fall after I’d moved back to Chicago from New York.  Newly married and living in the suburbs after being smack dab in the busiest city there is, I found myself lonely in that weird way only newlyweds are.  I had come off a season in New York that was rich with female friendships.  The see each other three to four times a week kind of friendships.  My marriage was so fresh that I felt guilty making plans in the evenings if Tommy wasn’t travelling.  And after a few months of this I realized the importance of girlfriends.  So I set out to get something regular on the calendar.

I had plenty of high school and college friends in the area but I’d been absent from their lives for two years.  It had become painfully clear that summer that their lives had gone on without me during this time.  In many ways reaching out to these friends to start the book club was my attempt to create a lifeline back to these women.  It was a way to try and figure out how I fit back in their lives and they in mine.

The initial email I sent out called it the “Better than Oprah’s Book Club Book Club.”  Our first gathering was at our tiny little coach house.  We had no kitchen table so we sat on the floor around our coffee table.  Our menu consisted entirely of appetizers from the frozen foods section of Trader Joe’s and I used every single serving platter and dish that I had received as wedding gifts.  We read Jodi Picoult’s “Nineteen Minutes” that first month.  It got mixed reviews.

We’ve been through a lot since that first meeting.  Members have come and gone.  We’ve had babies and weddings and new jobs and career changes.  Our meals have improved greatly since our first feast (thankfully!) and I’m always amazed at the creativity these girls have employed with regards to different dietary concerns.  (For a brief period we were meat, fish, gluten and dairy free!)  Some months we have riveting, challenging, passionate discussions about the books, and in others we didn’t even mention the book at all.  There was about a year where all we did was meet monthly to drink wine.  That has been the one consistency all these years: wine and lots of it.

I learned the art of hosting with these girls.  I learned how to plan a menu and coordinate cooking times.  I learned how to accommodate different dietary concerns and how to set a pretty table.  I learned all of it by making spectacularly huge mistakes and learning from them.  And isn’t that the joy of good friends: the grace to fail miserably and the faith of a better next time.

Beyond these gifts of grace and faith the book club girls have given me an even greater one: the company of smart, talented, beautiful women.  Some of us are moms, some single, some married and some dating.  We live in the ‘burbs and the city.  We work full time and part time and everything in between.  We are doctors, lawyers, teachers, students, youth pastors, marketing execs and non-profit champions.  There is such a wide array of thoughts and opinions and ideas and each of us brings a different perspective to the table.  Which is what I love.  Conversation can flow from we got our kid to stop using a pacifier to how the author’s character development allowed us to root for them even though we hated their actions.  From our desire to improve our marriage to politics and upcoming elections.  From women’s rights to trips to Mexico.  I learn so much from these women each month.  Being in their company fills me up.

I look forward to the regularity of these monthly meetings perhaps an inappropriate amount.  I love, love, love the women that comprise this club.  They are all smart, articulate, beautiful, kind and thoughtful.  I love intelligent conversation with these passionate women and silly gossip with them too.  Particularly now, as I juggle part time work and lots of time home with two small children, I find myself incredibly grateful for a monthly meeting with grown ups.  Not just any grown ups.  A group of some of the best grown ups I know.  The book club girls.