LADIES WHO LUNCH

 “Here’s to the ladies who lunch..

everybody laugh!”

Patti LuPone. Stephen Sondheim’s 80th birthday concert. (YouTube) I listen about once a week. She’s brilliant. The words to that song drop from her mouth like razor blades. She’s exactly what people mean when they say “a true stage performer.” You hear every syllable of the lyric. She expresses more in that 4 minutes than most screen actors manage in a two hour movie. 

But those lyrics! Sorry, Stephen. I think the song is a little out of date. Maybe the image of useless, society women spending their days schlepping between fittings and lunch dates — martinis in the tank — was true once upon a time. At least, in the Doris Day movies. 

Or maybe that image was never true. True upper society women during the last century more likely met at a museum fundraiser — or maybe a horse or dog show (dogs that they bred and trained). They went to lunch at their social clubs to listen to lectures: Parasites in Ocean Mammals, Growing Food in Window Boxes, Statistics on Eastern Immigrant Graduate Students (whom they sponsored with an annual rummage sale.) 

Meanwhile, mid-level women without domestic help were probably canning strawberry jam, going to their monthly book club and quilt making circle. They ate the crusts off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches left by the kiddies while standing at the kitchen sink!

Then the century rolled over and everybody got careers and jobs! 

Oh my! How easy it is to paint these pictures with such broad brush strokes! 

I had the ladies for lunch yesterday. Mostly, we are “retired” from art careers or teaching careers (those just happen to be my friends — not too different from women who retired from law offices or non-profit organizations.) We ranged in ages from late 60 something to near-eighty. 

Two still actively work. Two have only this year given up careers; Covid made the decision easier. 

And me. 

Conversations ranged from “have you decided what you want for end of life?” to “what should we buy at Ikea? the best choices from Trader Joe’s? Travel plans now that the world is re-opening. And most importantly: how has the Covid year changed you, me, and our culture?”

I like ladies who lunch — especially those at a certain age. Our view is different. We are less competitive and more tolerant. I like that about us. We read and we laugh. I like that too. 

I’d love to invite Patti LuPone to lunch  — introduce her to my friends. I’ll bet she has some dandy stage stories. Or maybe she would simply join in with “my end of life plan — I’m giving my body to a medical school — right after I have all the tattoos sanded off” or “I always buy frozen rice at Trader Joe’s.” 

We’d certainly all laugh. 

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MYSTERIES, YES (a poem by Mary Oliver)

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood,

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs,

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity,

while we ourselves dream of rising,

How two hands touch and the bonds will

never be broken,

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company, always, with those who say

“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads.