Vermont
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 12:00AM 
Photo by Jennifer Mowery Marsh
I have been trying to decide what to tell you about my trip to Vermont with the girlfriends last weekend. It was so tempting to take this awkwardly snapped backseat photo of our run-in with Officer Morrison, tales from the newly downloaded Truth or Dare iPhone app, and the fact that we had chosen a signature cocktail for this getaway to spin this story into a hyperbolic Moms Gone Wild tale of mischief.
But I think it serves me better to stay closer to the truth. Let me begin at the beginning.
Just over five years ago a group of new mothers organized ourselves in miraculous ways in order to gather—babies, burp clothes, and every manner of diaper in tow—at a local coffee shop for lunch. The babies, and our motherhood, were six-weeks-old. We were strangers, the four of us. The bags under our eyes and the nursing tanks under our hoodies, however, were enough common ground on which to stand. Lunch came and plates were eventually taken away. Coffee and milkshakes followed. Water refills and water refills and water refills and suddenly it was dinnertime and a friendship had been formed.
I suppose it is excessive to say, well over a hundred playgroup sessions later, that meeting these women saved my life but I know that there are ways in which it saved my mind and perhaps even my heart. Mothering is isolating work and I am thankful that I have spent only a rare moment of this journey in isolation.
It took five years of dreaming for us to gather in this newly miraculous manner: four women piling together into a car with a trunk full of warm layers and snacks, music and reading material, and not a few bottles of wine. Moms-Only Weekend Trip to Vermont.
Without exaggerating, I do not have much of a story to tell. What did we do all weekend? We talked. We talked through NYC Friday evening traffic, over diner fries, and along windy country roads. In conversation we migrated from the cottage’s couches to the kitchen table and back again. We talked over coffee, tea, wine, scones, chili, cookies, tapas, and gluten-free crackerbread. We talked while climbing up a mountain and while wandering back down. It wasn’t until well into the drive home that there was a brief lull in the conversation. Brief.
Photo by Jennifer Mowery Marsh
We drove five plus hours away from our husbands and children and careers, but we did not really leave any of it behind. Out of cell phone range but still ourselves, we did not exactly escape.
In my church there is a phrase that echoes among the congregation. We hope together that our community is a place where people may come to multiply their joys and divide their sorrows. In Vermont last weekend we multiplied and divided: our husbands’ habits and children’s quirks, our grief and struggles to adjust, health concerns and medical investigations, the highs and lows of vocation, families falling apart and coming back together. Each of us gave over a little of what burdens us and traded it for the burdens of the others. Speaking for myself, I can say that in these few short hours my heart breathed a sigh of relief. Nourished by the listening ears and compassion of these friends, I am like a broken bone healed, I feel strong in places where I had been weak.
What happens in Vermont, stays in Vermont, we joked with irony, barely finishing a second bottle of wine. But the truth is none of it stayed in Vermont. Multiplied and divided in perfect equation, I carry it all.
Mom's goals 
Reader Comments (18)
Beautiful. You are truly each a blessing!
Emily,
It's rare that a post touches me as much as this one did. It cut so close to the quick. Did you find you needed the good cry you had anticipated in order to make the cross over from mother to woman again?
Just listening to you describe it gave me a little bit of that peace, that nourishment of time spent talking (uninterrupted by kids) with other women. It's balm to a weary soul. I am so very glad that you got yours. I am also glad that you shared some of it with us.
Thank you,
Lisa-Jo
Thanks for sharing Emily. Love what you had to say. It sounds like an ideal weekend. I wish you could bottle it up and pass it out to the rest of us.
I found your blog and this post through someone on Twitter. Her tweet said, "If you are a mother and you only read one thing today, read this." And she was absolutely right. I have only been a mom for five months now, but already I can feel the isolation sinking in - and I'm a full-time working mom out of the house. Its easy to let friendships slip away when you become a parent, especially when none of your friends have children. But your post reminded me that ever effort should be made to prevent that from happening.
Because of your post, I picked up the phone and made a lunch date with a girlfriend this weekend. I hope many more will follow...
Thanks for sharing.
I read GypsyMama's tweet, too, and had to come read! And I'm so glad I did. What a beautiful way of expressing a community- church, friends, whatever- multiplying and dividing. I love it!
So glad you had a wonderful weekend and we all need those every now and again so we can come back to our families recharged.
Thanks for a beautiful picture and a great slice of friendship!
What a lovely post and getaway. So happy you all have each other.
That sounds lovely. And what a wonderful thing to have a group of friends like that!
i cried a little. again. i'm going to have to plan a weekend away with single women who wish to be moms(or something of the sort).
what a beautiful post!! I praise God we aren't meant to walk through this life alone! I am so thankful for my friends who walk beside me and share/divide my joys and sorrows!
This was a very touching post. It had me well up in gratitude for the women that I have been growing into motherhood with. Thank you.
You wrote so beautifully about this experience. It makes a person want to be in attendance.
Be well!
Wow. This was incredible. Incredible.
I'm just dropping in to let you know that this weblog is being featured on Five Star Friday - http://www.fivestarfriday.com/2009/11/five-star-fridays-edition-80.html
Wow! Very cool! Thank you so much for that!
Ah, Play Group Moms.... the women who know that if your children grow up to be axe murderers it certainly wasn't your fault.... they've watched you parent, after all!
We all attended the first of the Play Group Weddings last Labor Day. My toast at the rehearsal dinner began with : "I was invited to this wedding 26 years ago"
I love this story. I'm lucky enough to be part of a group of girlfriends that come together for a "trip" every year. It is, without question, medicine for the soul.
Emily, I say so often how the friends I made during those consuming parenting years are a great gift. You told this so beautifully. It makes me miss the after crazy lunch hours on the couches of Tonya and Janet. It also reminds me to get in touch.
Funny--I am just reading An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to A Warming World (by Seidl) all set in VT and it's got me aching for a leaf-peeping, maple sugar tasting trip to the state.