Breakfast with Egrets
There is something to be said for solitude. For taking the phone off the hook (or ripping it out of the wall), for vowing never to have a cell phone or beeper, for not being concerned with online accessibility while traveling.It's called disconnect.
Disconnect quickly shape-shifts to "re-connect." As in reconnect with yourself.
As I journeyed across the country, by Greyhound, I watched the landscape roll by. Mountains, valleys, rivers, bridges, cityscapes, pasture, windfarms. I wasn't plugged into an IPod or Walkman. I listened to the murmured conversations around me, watched people, and slowly let my brain jump off the fast track to a realm of "taking it as it comes." The kids call it "whatever."
In Vermont, atop a snow-covered (as in four feet of snow) mountain, I curled up in a recliner by a large picture window, a huge black lab puppy with paws bigger than my hand curled up in my lap. The only sound was -- silence. The occasional crack of wood from the wood stove.
I Connecticut, I nursed a case of the flu from my hotel room, just me and my bottle of NyQuil and a jar of Tylenol. Oh, Kleenex too.
At college, with its magical snow-covered landscape, I kept early hours (not counting two nights of late breaking news I managed long distance), retiring to my private room to rest and recharge myself. I seemed to need a lot of that this time around.
I give a lot of myself on that altar of family, friends, and community action. I always have, but I guess I am not as young as I used to be (I'm not dead yet, though). I just need a bit more time to recharge. And I have set my priorities to a difference order by placing my self and my need for periodic solitude at the top of that priority list. I think I have earned it.
I am home again, but already planning a summer sojourn back to New England, maybe to Canada, and who knows where else. I do know that once I am north, my schedule (other than school) will follow no fixed pattern and have no fixed points of accessibility for those I leave behind. They'll just have to cope with it. I'll be too busy doing, well, whatever I feel like doing. Isn't that what vacation is all about?
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