Musical Accompaniment from Sarah McLachlan - Wait
I remember vacations. Times we spent having fun together - day trips, hanging out, watching movies and rubbing each others' backs. Ordering chinese and pizza in the same day and baking a cake to eat after. Long workouts. Leisurely sex.
They were respites. They gave us the badly-needed recharge to keep up the blind maze of life. They exist no more.
Vacations, now, are the time in which we discharge a number of obligations that pile up while we spend our days working and the rest of our time parenting. We're lucky - family child minding provided a few days of "free time" which we spent organizing the critically disorganized of our household and taking care of things long overdue. And then the vacation started.
First was a visit at A.'s parents, a six hour drive North. Not one night's uninterrupted sleep, since I was sharing a room with my restless daughter and a smaller bed than usual with my husband. Socializing with his extended family, balancing parenting with allowing grandmama her deserved space. Tiptoeing around grandpapa because, for no apparent reason, we make each other uneasy. Or maybe it's just me.
Then, it was off to my parents' small, recently-renovated house. They just discovered that their new floors scratch easily and they don't like the door opening and closing when the air conditioning is on, and please be sure not to drip any water on the hardwood in the kitchen. But make yourselves at home.
The house is on the lake. Except the lake water is low this year so it's half a mile of smelly mud and reeds before you hit miles of calf-deep water. I walked for twenty minutes and never found water as high as my waist. Which is totally not their fault, I recognize.
Nor is it their fault that I am simply not a good enough person to be around them. The things that are wrong with them are just too much like the things that are still wrong with me, and I can't stand having the magnifying glass so large and unforgiving.
They did their best, and I can see that. I was a challenge to parent, and they hadn't had entirely helpful examples. They used what was good that they learned from my grandparents, and inflicted only some of what was not so good. They are who they are, and they don't pretend to be anything else. It's me who is not satisfied or comfortable with that.
So in any case, I lost it. Only once, when there were SO many opportunities, but still. It poisons everything. They are not forgivers. They are fake forgivers, which is a million times worse because it eliminates any opportunity for connection and shared understanding. It's why I thought I hated them for awhile - because they didn't want to connect with me, so how could they love me? But correlation is not causation, my friends. Remember that if nothing else.
Okay, you thought this was a whine about losing my vacation and now I'm dragging you through the same tired story we all have in one way or another about someone or another. I'll get back to the story.
Days spent trying to keep the kids busy when the wind was too strong to be outside and they just needed to run and climb. No sleep on the hard, uncomfortable futon with the Moon shining on me through the invisible blinds, from both the sky and from the water. She sat with me in sympathy but did not heal me. I am not hers to heal.
Yesterday, the 2 hour pack and load, followed by the 8 hour drive home from my parents'. Eight hours in a van with recently-toilet-trained preschoolers using dirty, tiny rest stops. What can I say? I trust your imagination.
Fell into bed last night, only to be awakened no fewer than three times by childrens' nightmares and having to pee. And 7am this morning, there they are! In full colour and 3D surround sound. I'm so tired I could cry.
This is my vacation?
I just walked away to write this, left them with my husband. He took a look at my actual eyes for a few seconds this morning, so I think he'll understand. I walked away to put some of this weight down, see if I can let it go as the words appear on the screen. See if I can calm the white-peaked waves this vacation has stirred in my body and my spirit. Like that lake, water lapping at my knees, inviting me to swim when there's not enough water to swim in. Restless. Unstill.
Tuesday it's back to work. I hope that I find a way to recharge in the remaining days, because right now, I'm running on empty.
Barely.
(I'm losing myself in the memory with music from Sarah McLachlan: Elsewhere)
