Saturday Night

Tonight I am a babysitter. One of David's friends is celebrating her birthday so he and some other friends who also have a baby (a cute little girl, Oona, about six months younger than Eli) went out to dinner in Soho. The friends live in a gorgeous but faraway part of Brooklyn and none of our nannies were available, so I am on baby duty in the East Village. Oona and Eli are sound asleep in their respective cots and I am drinking leftover wine and eating leftover food while fretting at the sound of every noise I hear through the baby monitor placed in David's office where Oona is sleeping. The noises I hear have all turned out to be random interference and, fingers crossed, it will stay that way.

Up here on the 14th floor I can hear only faint sounds of the City; the sound of impatient horns, ambulance cars, people on their way to bars and parties. There is a party at the Hungarian Cultural Institute tonight that I would have enjoyed perhaps, but instead I am reading my father's recent article about his second wife and antisemitism, writing a little, contemplating my Saturday nights from a time when "Saturday nights" were meant to be full of promise.

When I was single and without a family in Paris, London or Budapest, Saturday nights felt like an obligation; an obligation to go out, meet people, have fun, meet someone. Of course, on nights that I went out, I never met that elusive someone and, thinking back, Fun, with a capital "F," was often no less elusive. Then again, Saturday nights spent at home were filled with cigarettes, bad TV and anxiety. What if I had gone out. Maybe this time, at this party I would have, I could have, met someone interesting, someone different. Then you let go and made a pact with yourself about the following Saturday, which would calm you until the anxiety about possibly not having any plans by then would kick in.

I am happy to be past all that. It's a worthwhile stage, for sure, and I am glad to have experienced all that, but checking in on these sleeping babies every half hour sure beats my Saturday nights from that time any day.