Ladies Who Lunch: A montage
Writing | Life lessons
The Tender Years
“Mama, who are they?” you ask with the newly formed words you have developed.
Your mother looks away from your little brother who is happily throwing fries all over the carpeted restaurant floor. She eyes the laughing, carefree, well dressed women at the table halfway across the room. Their hats are the latest styles. Their lipsticks are perfectly in place. Their martini glasses are colorful and full.
“Those are the ladies who lunch,” she says. The phrase “ladies who lunch” reverberates in your mind. Your mother speaks it aloud with disapproval. Yet there is a reverence there as well. And something your young mind can’t yet comprehend.
“Don’t stare, darling. It’s rude,” Mother says.
Social Experiments
Your formative years are a whirlwind of making friends, walking away from friends, tangling with unexpected friends who then abandon you and you see later arm in arm with other friends.
Your mother, your brother, and you continue to frequent the restaurant where the group of ladies who lunch appear. Their skirts are beautiful peacock colors. With champagne, they toast each other and themselves. They flirt shamelessly with the wait staff.
You always observe when Mother isn’t paying attention. Mental notes are taken.
Falling Apart
Just as you have a tight knit group of friends you could lunch with on sunny afternoons and with whom you could while away a few lazy hours, you graduate high school, you enter college, and you hit your twenties, your close knit circle goes their separate ways — abroad, work, marriage. .
You sit alone in that restaurant, textbooks, loose notes, a calculator, and pencils are strewn around the bowl of soup which was all you could afford.
The ladies who lunch seem to mock you as they enjoy their lunch. Hats must be out this season. Their up-dos are professionally created. You smell their exotic and beautifully light expensive perfumes from where you sit. Their pressed skirts now hit below the knee. Chilled champagne has been replaced with full glasses of wine.
Coming Together
You have said “I do,” to the man who has made you the happiest you have ever been. You have welcomed children and are learning how to run the gauntlet of domestication. It is your turn to answer your young daughter’s inquiry regarding the laughing women at the table across the restaurant.
“Those are the ladies who lunch. Don’t stare, darling, it’s rude.”
You catch the same disapproval, the same reverence in your voice you once heard in your mother’s reply. Now you are old enough to recognize the other tone in that answer. It is longing.
Too Tired
Your daughter is sneaking out at night. Your son is a whirlwind of ADHD and chaos. There is always laundry. There are always dishes. The children gauge how long it takes from when you walk in the door after work to when you first trip over the dog. He is so excited to have you home.
Your trips to the restaurant only happen when it is your daughter’s birthday or when your husband remembers your anniversary.
The ladies who lunch still appear. There are fewer of them. They are still perfectly coiffed. But there are some canes now. There is delicate tissue paper skin. Slower steps are taken. Water glasses are placed next to wine glasses.
What Happened?
Your kids are off to college, off to work, off to their own lives. Where did the time go? Your husband and you find yourself rambling around a house that is now too large. You feel more like you are haunting rather than living. You miss the exuberant dog.
The ladies who lunch are now showing up with chaperones. The chaperones, usually their own children, aren’t allowed to sit with the ladies who lunch. They huddle at a table close by. They need to be close enough if one of the ladies loses her balance while getting out of a chair. A trip to the bathroom may require assistance. The chaperones watch, ever vigilant.
Easing In
As you have become a grandmother and have retired from your job, you have reached out. You have reached into the past. Now, occasionally, you meet with an old high school friend or a college roommate for an afternoon lunch. You discuss the living of life but you also discuss the grieving of death. You raise your glass to toast this day.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see the remaining ladies who lunch raise theirs at the same time. For the briefest of moments you experience comradery with these women who have always been beyond your means. You no longer yearn to be a part of their lives. In the end, you realize they have been a part of yours.
Author’s Note
The idiom “ladies who lunch” was recently introduced to me by a dear friend. I had never heard the phrase so I had to look it up. Steven Sondheim wrote the song Ladies Who Lunch for the Broadway show, Company, in the 1970s. Urban dictionary defines ladies who lunch as “rich middle-aged women with no jobs or other meaningful ways to occupy their time, who descend on upscale cafes around lunchtime to hang out.”
