Vacation?

It’s rare that I get an entire two hours to myself, even rarer that I get almost three! Which is why I took them this afternoon - didn’t ask, didn’t tell, just took. Right as Squid was waking up from his morning nap, I yelled out from the bedroom, “Hon, can you get the baby?”

Then, quietly, without warning, I snuck away. Down to the garage I went and didn’t look back. I rolled out the hose, kicked off my flip-flops, grabbed a sponge and stepped out in to the sun. Ahhh…

You may not think washing a car qualifies as “me” time, but I take what I can get! And, tiptoeing barefoot through puddles of water and sloshing alongside manmade rainbows on this uniquely beautiful San Francisco day felt more like a vacation than most real vacations.

I took my time. I even vacuumed the inside and gathered up all the empty water bottles, burp cloths, napkins, Wet Ones, CDs and tapes (yeah, I listen to cassettes in my car), and random Pokemon cards (my stepson’s favorite pastime) until my NOT A MINIVAN was sparkling!

It crossed my mind that perhaps I should go back upstairs, check in on the baby. Fuck it. If I go up there I’m not coming back down, I reminded myself and decided to put my trust in Jason. He can take care of things without me butting in, I assured myself - at least for today, anyway.

I had the stereo playing (ancient Liz Phair), my dog lying happily in my soggy footsteps, a load of laundry running, pants rolled up, hair pulled back, rummaging through stacks of goodies and not so goodies in the garage - stuff I’ve been meaning to get to for months. Then…”Whatcha doin’?” Jason came down in shorts, looking around for the mail.

“Just stuff,” I shrugged. He didn’t ask me to come back up, to take the baby, to relieve his daddy duties. He didn’t ask anything except, “You want some chocolate pudding?”

I smiled. I was reminded, then, that it’s okay to walk away, okay to take a break. I don’t need to be in the mix all the freaking time. I can be absent and the house isn’t going to burn; the baby isn’t going to get ill; no one is going to starve and our little tiny world that I always see as being so BIG is, like everything else, going to keep on turning.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 9:45 pm and is filed under All About Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.