I miss drinking
I miss drinking. Mom culture seems to be all about a wine glass and a messy bun, rocking a sweatshirt and yoga pants.
Pass.
At least on the bun, my four-year-old can rock a messy bun that outshines my attempts every day. I don’t miss the wine either.
I do miss staying up late on hot summer nights with a cold rum and coke, stealing a cigarette drag while my friend isn’t looking. I don’t smoke and she knows it, and if she catches me, she’ll kick my ass. She and I used to go to dance clubs, loud music where you can feel the bass thumping under your chest, flashing lights that are horrible if you drink too much. A semi-crowded dance floor full of all ages, with drinks in their hands. But I didn’t dance. I didn’t know how. Everyone else seemed to know moves that just collided with my awkward attempts at movement.
It took so long for me to dance in public, expose my insecurities in a series of movements only I knew the steps to. Then, one night on one of the crowded dark floors, I stopped caring who saw me and what moves I made and just let loose. Embarrassing, yes. Did I get a girl’s number on my way off the floor? Also, yes.
Drinking is fun with friends. Walking to the bar in the freezing cold, leaving with the liquor warming our bellies for the cold walk home. For seven years my neighbor (the one who’d kick my ass over a cigarette) and I would see the first nighttime snowfall as the best time to hit the dance club.
“No one will be there!” we’d exclaim, trying not to slip on the uneven sidewalk, treacherous in our exaggerated heels on dry pavement, outright dangerous when covered in snow. We’d make it to the bar and it would be packed with people who had the same thoughts we did; the first snowfall is a cause for celebration. At the end of February, we’re sick of it, but tonight we revel in it.
I miss drinking. Drinking was extra fun with Bob. All our hypothetical conversations of crazy nonsense.
One night as we made our way from one of our neighborhood’s many bars, I was prancing over the city sidewalk cracks and he was laughing with his hands in his pockets against the chill. I’ve been told that I don’t run when I’m drunk, I prance like a baby deer. Slightly unsteady but always ready to skirt off towards something interesting.
“I could see us having kids together,” he said, his breath pooling in front of his mouth in the cold air.
“Seriously?” I asked, suddenly feeling more sober than I had a minute ago. I turned to walk backwards up the hill in front of him. Guys don’t talk about the future like girls, I’d been taught. Talk about the future and you’ll scare them away. I wanted to see where this conversation would take us, the two friends who’d lived together so long no one believed we weren’t dating.
“Yeah,” he said, “I can see it. You’ll make a great mom.” A big grin encapsulated his face under the yellow light of a streetlight. I’m sure my own was just as wide. We were moving towards our future, Bob and I, we’d been on this path forever and not realized we were heading in the same direction.
Had we even been dating when we talked about kids that night? I don’t even know. We must have been… but thirteen years of drunken night conversations start to blur with the thirteen years of sober ones. Timelines become blurry too. His mom recently mentioned that “he’d always been sweet on you.” We lived together for four years before we started dating. We’d seen each other’s highs and lows and still wanted to be together.
Back then the nights would end with us collapsing into bed when we got home, snoring after the room stopped spinning. Waking up the next morning either feeling fine or like a boulder was stuck to our bodies. The downfall of the apartment we shared was the bedrooms were upstairs and the only bathroom was downstairs. How fast can you get down the stairs without actually falling down the stairs?
I miss drinking. I miss going out to clubs with my neighbor, or going to see a band play at a bar with Bob. It’s on hold (for now, I console myself). Bob died from cancer two years ago. I have a hard “no solo drinking” policy. I have to take care of our kids now. You only need to find out once how unforgiving kids are when you have a hangover. Every parent finds that ring of hell after a fun night once.
I was hungover on my 32nd birthday. Charlotte was a year and a half and had just started walking. Our family of three traveled to Seattle with Bob’s parents, his brother, Mike, and Mike’s girlfriend, Ashley. Bob’s cousin was getting married and everyone wanted a vacation that involved a plane destination.
When Bob and his family were at a nighttime get-together with cousins and Charlotte was asleep, Ashley and I drank most of a bottle of Sangria. You know, the giant fat bottles with the tiny little handles? We almost finished one by ourselves. When they came home, Bob and Mike just laughed at us, sitting on the back deck of our rented house, talking about our inner feelings and whether or not the dishwasher was haunted (neither of us remembered starting it but the dishes were clean when we went to bed).
The next day I stated, “it’s my birthday,” and refused to leave the cool dark confines of our basement room of the Airbnb our family was sharing with relatives. Bob made sure that I was only allowed to stay in my dark quiet sanctuary because it was my birthday, tomorrow it would be back to “normal parent” mode.
He was not so lucky on the occasion when he learned his own lesson. After a night of drinking with his brother and cousins during another, smaller family reunion (to honor his great-grandmother who’d died the year before), he discovered he didn’t have the “drinking tolerance” he once held in college. After having an active toddler and a currently pregnant wife, our lives didn’t revolve around campfires and nighttime parties. He still had a beer or two at night, but we went to bed early because our daughter was up the next morning no matter what.
He had my sympathy the next morning as he tried to hide under his covers while his two-year-old insisted on finding him (“I foun Daddy! Hi Daddy!” she’d laugh in toddler-speak).
If you’re going to drink when you have kids, someone must be the backup for the next morning. Instead of a designated driver you have a designated parent.
Drinking isn’t fun anymore. Bob died and I lost my backup. I’m always the designated parent now. You can’t be sure you won’t feel like crap in the morning, no matter how much or how little you indulge.
I also don’t think I’ll be my fun, prancing, happy drunk self alone- alone with my thoughts and snoring dogs. At least I laugh with the pot gummies my friend introduced. Not always, not all the time, but I’m not sobbing in the shower with a beer in my hand reminding myself not to drown. Reminding myself to be careful, I can’t slip and hurt myself with sleeping kids.
It’s the one thing I don’t have to do alone. I don’t need it. In a “wine o’clock” culture I still long for my favorite rum and Coke, or maybe a Jameson and ginger to feel fancy, but I can’t risk the hangover. And I don’t need any additional help to feel miserable while I sit in my house alone after my kids go to sleep. Sometimes the dogs snore loud enough that I can close my eyes and feel it in my chest like the bass of a dance song. I don’t even have to leave my couch to hear the bass thumping or see the fog of his breath as we walk home on a winter night.
It isn’t so much the drinking I miss as it is the company to drink with.
