I woke this morning with my daughter already snuggled in bed with me. That was unusual in my household where my babies cherished their spaces, their beds, their rooms. They only snuggled with me wide awake with twinkles in their eyes and love dripping from their hearts.
She was burning hot. As I contemplated dragging myself out to get her medicine, loud shrieks of my littlest made my body shoot up, and I sprinted to his room. He was hotter than my daughter. He clung on to me with a ferocity I did not know existed in the world. I glanced out the window momentarily and realized the tropical storm had flooded my entire driveway. More rain was due later in the day.
A deep sigh. Lots of positive thoughts therapy later, I thought about what I was doing at all other times of my life other than now. Last year this time, I was preparing for Alaska. That is what I needed, a vacation. I needed one desperately. But my vacation days were going into days like this – sick days, school volunteer days, and the little time that was left was reserved for Writer’s Conferences I had cherry picked to attend later in the year.
Life, what can I say.
Last Friday, I was feeling exactly the same way, exhausted, overwhelmed and hungry for a break even though my kids were fever-free. But not just that, I had dropped the potty-training plans for my two-year-old over the long weekend on an idea – idea to get away and find vacation getaways in my stereotypical mind, the blandest of all united states, Indiana, the neighboring state, also the state we had business to take care of. So hungry was I for a getaway, that I found the little slivers of Indiana that were not the same old flat lands interrupted intermittently by windmills, and we headed out.
Vacation unfolded.
Post breakfast, kids smelled the aroma of my nail paint as I painted my hand and toe nails with Dua drooling over the nail paint. It was vacation so I got up and painted her hands next, and she emitted her sputtering laughter. I had just finished coating the last pinky nail when Mir, my two-year-old, erupted, “Mamma, see!”
Outside his window was a giant windmill. The next ten minutes were spent with, “Mamma, see!” and lots of laughter.
That evening we soaked our feet in Cataract Falls and sat down listening to the water thundering down giant boulders. Cataract Falls were Indiana’s biggest waterfalls, and the hungry discovered it.
Next morning, we visited a dam with ferocious, growling, water-sprayer river, the Hoosier National forest where kids bathed in a natural lake in the sweltering ninety degrees hot summer-like day.
We ate ice cream from French Licks ice cream cum coffee shop in the town called, “French Lick.” Yah, I thought the same thought when I heard the name, but the town itself was a little slice of culture, hilly and our waterpark resort was atop its own mountain where kids were uncontrolled with a dose of hysteria and laughter that evening and the next morning.
We returned this past Monday. Thursday is here with sick, hot babies, and I am thirsty for a vacation already. So once again, I can unwind, interrupt my routine, forget my worries, and escape from my realities even if for a week at a time.
Until next time, these words will suffice to relive and remember – another time, a less-stressful time.