So, You Come Home From Colorado...

So, you go to Boulder for 4 days and you are revived in your bones and in the corners of your soul just because you are somewhere new and you have to reset your watch and look at mountains out your hotel window, and gorge on restaurant food. Never once having to make your own bed or do the dishes...

You go to Boulder and you sleep more than you've slept in the past 5 years and it feels like you're alive again. You walk around showered and confident and wearing cute outfits that you wouldn't wear at home and you get hooted at TWICE while walking solo down the street by guys in work trucks. And, though you know they're driving by at 45 mph so you're really just a blur to them, and they would honk at ANYONE who was a female and between the ages of 15 and 65, you still feel a thrill that for the first time in God knows how long you've been cat-called.


You hike and drink in the clean air during the day and fine wine in the evening and marvel at snow capped mountain ranges that provide a surreal, picturesque back drop to a veteran east coaster who was born on the wrong side of the continent. In many ways.


You read 2.5 books in 4 days. One shall remain nameless, lest you oust yourself as a Twilight-follower. But it was yummy and indulgent like the empty calories of your favorite candy. The other was an inspiring, sweet, and quick read by Kelly Corrigan called The Middle Place. Its pureness of conversational language piques your interest in memoir writing - something you never considered. You come alive putting together the flood of creative word-falls that rush from your mind and you feel the excitement no one but you would ever understand as you start to give birth to something... a story possibly worth telling. Perhaps. You feel alive with the prospect because writing is the only thing outside of family that consumes you with passion and purpose.
You come home missing your kids like crazy and with infinite patience as they settle into all their quirks and neediness. You wish you were always this good at being a Mom. And, aren't they just the cutest, sweetest little tiny people you've ever seen?!?

You feel so needed and complete and loved and loving, and it fills the hole that the trip ripped open while it simultaneously filled another. Because you are a mother, and nothing and no one and no where on this earth can take it away from you. You can never pretend it doesn't exist, even as you're caring for the other parts of who you are. Even though that's okay and NECESSARY, you just can't pretend you're not a mother. Even though you bite and claw and beg and fantasize about leaving it all behind for an hour, a day, a week; it is who you are and who you were meant to be. Though perhaps going away for an hour, a day, a week every now and then just makes you a little better at it. A little more patient. A little more grateful. A little more full and rested and human.

And you can't wait to go away again. For many reasons. But perhaps the best part, the real reason you can't wait to journey afar, is so you can once again feel how good it is to come back.