Hiding from Vacation (Vaca Day 6)

Well CT,

Tomorrow we’ll be returning to you and I’m starting to feel it.  The “it” of swimming in anything but normal, without the floatie of routine or consistency.  I’m feeling the lack of sleep, and questioning the sanity of my decision to combine a back to back late evening of gaming with my whim to catch the 5:55am sunrise.  I’m struggling with the oddness of seeing my husband every day and not remembering the last full conversation we had because although Virginia is for lovers, family vacation is not.  (The top scintillating conversations we’ve had so far this week are: “Did you put sunscreen on the kids, or was I supposed to?” and “I think I saw a jellyfish in the water.”)  In looking through our pictures, I found an unfortunate trend.  Let’s see if you can figure it out:

(Ummm, yeah, you can ignore that last picture my son took of me pretending to be attacked by a giant lobster statue…) But the common denominator for all the OTHER pictures above is simply that my husband and I aren’t in any of the pictures together because we’re always tag-teaming kid duty.  I actually think the fine-print on all family vacation contracts stipulates that couples-only pictures are strictly prohibited, with the exception of dude ranch trips or travel to Ohio and Yemen.)

As my mom said today, vacation feels like its supposed to be a delicious mini-slice of heaven on earth, and yet we’ll always be falling a bit short of perfection.  (Even with delicious food, precious family fun, surf and java.)

And eventually something about the relaxation of vacation actually draws a renewed desire for something truly purposeful and intentional in our pre-trip lives.  With any luck we leave paradise with a piece of peace, a reminder to slow long enough to savor people over agendas, and a vision of our smallness in the midst of vast creation that gives us fresh taste of humility’s wisdom.

But I’m not sure my emotions have quite caught up to all that wisdom, so for the next few minutes I’ll just finish hiding from vacation here in the AC without the kids.  I’m like a chameleon; I’m blending so well with the wall art I bet you can’t even see me.If you can’t spot me, don’t worry.  You can catch me in person in a couple days.

~Incognito Carrye