Vacation is really not a thing when you have young children. In our case, we keep rotating the environments, they are all peaceful or fun or a little of both- but it still carries with it the usual responsibilities, melt downs, and lack of sleep that life offers up in heaps during this season of life.
We moved to the southwest over 5 years ago, and this is our time. really, my time, to travel down South and reacquaint myself with the beautiful faces of my family.
It's the time, when my little girls put their feet on the soil of my own childhood. They look up and see the tall pines, the lazy rivers. The wide open Atlantic. Sea shells. Walks with sand in their toes. Salt caked in their skin. Fried fish and homemade peach ice cream. Fireworks. My people.
Traveling home, for me, however, often feels like traveling back in time. My growth feels stunted. I stand in the grocery store of my youth, and feel awkwardly 16 again. I imagine life then. It was starting to get complicated. Those memories are not the best ones. I have grown less afraid of sadness in my life, but there is some sadness, the kind that creeps up in childhood grocery isles, that feel best left on the shelf.
I am picking up contact solution, but I can't shake the past. I pick it up anyway, as if its for old times sake.
Every isle, a ghost of some sort.
I venture towards the baked beans and think some pre vacation therapy may be in order next year.
What's hard to explain is that it's all background noise. The present is a good one. The music is playing, the kids are happy and really its all very magical. They will remember these vacations. And there is redemption being played on the stage right before my eyes.
but the background noise, well, sometimes I just can't shake it.
I make it to the car. Take one of those deep sighs. Dr. Calhoun always said those were prayers.
I have been praying that prayer my entire life.
My daughter Millie prays it too.
In her deep 3 year old frustration, she often lets out a deep sigh.
We pass it all down, the good and the sad.
I wind my way back through the sleepy Georgia roads. Open the door.
The music is playing, kids are drinking juice boxes, and my sister is playing beach paddle ball on concrete.
I have been going about life so hard and strong, I have forgotten what it was like to reflect on much of anything, and the fact that my reflection has showed up some of my deepest wounds feels like betrayal.
Why, self, now? Can we not mosey down this road on vacation?
But it's echoes are all around me.
And they want to be healed.
Life is like this. It ambushes you on Friday morning and begs for more.
It says, this is good. but it can be better.
It says you are loved, but you can love better.
It says life is fast, and short, and long, and infuriating, and beautiful, and sometimes, even perfect.
It says those ghosts are talking but they aren't real anymore.
It says walk out of the grocery store and back to your family.
And then thank God it's all yours for the taking.
