Vacation

"A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you've been taking."

I like this quote I found in a magazine because it is so, so true. I took a vacation yesterday. I didn't leave town or even our county, the smallest one in North Carolina.
A vacation doesn't have to mean driving hundreds of miles to the beach or flying to Europe to see buildings thousands of years old. A vacation can be just in your mind. Watching the Travel Channel on TV is a way my husband vacations at this time. He enjoys the beach resorts in locales too expensive for us to ever visit. In his mind he takes a vacation because he can no longer take what he's been taking -- the dark days of winter, the rain and cold, and his enforced immobility because of his health. His mood gets dark like the clouds that blew up yesterday and gave us a five minute blizzard.


I also took a vacation yesterday. I could no longer take what I'd been taking, so I drove my little red hybrid around town to the post office, the drug store, the grocery store, the bank and when I had no place else to go, I drove to the lake and parked facing the water.

The wind over the lake created white caps. The bare bushes and grasses on the bank tossed and leaned away from the water. In the distance forested islands blurred gray with the low clouds, and the mountains became hovering ghosts over the water. I opened my car windows and let the rain blow in clean and fresh and cold. Soon snow flakes and hard icy raindrops peppered my windshield. For just a few moments, the dark sky looked like night had set it, but as quick as it came, it was gone. To the west rays of sunshine streaked down from behind a small cloud over the lake like the pictures in the Bible we had at when I was a child. The pictures of Jesus kneeling and looking to Heaven.

My little vacation was short, but I drove home singing, my shoulders relaxed and a smile on my face.

This was a vacation I needed just as many caregivers need to take a moment for themselves. As women we often forget to take care of ourselves. To find quiet time, solitude, where we can think and focus.

As writers we need quiet time. Though difficult with the myriad of things we do, we must make it a priority. Schedule our writing time into our day.

If I could, I'd have a writing schedule like author Sharyn McCrumb. She writes all night and sleeps during the day when her husband and children are gone. I am a night owl. It is two o'clock in the morning right now.

Take a mini-vacation if you need to find quiet and alone time away from family, telephone and TV. I will go back to view the lake another day when I need a vacation. And I don't have to explain or apologize for going there, because when I return I'm a brighter and happier person..