Vacation Sighs

I look forward to vacations but I never realize how vital they are until I am in the middle of one. A break in the routine, a chance to stay up until the end of the game (I always fall asleep on the couch but I'm giddy with the possibilities), and some unscheduled time to see what unfolds.

This is what has unfolded so far and it has been glorious: hanging out with a dear friend and realizing that she has made it through a difficult ordeal unscathed.... We need for our friends to be OK and when it works out that way, cause for celebration; heading to Northampton for the day and checking out old haunts...The Raven, Faces, Thornes...seeing dreadlocks, piercings and feeling the college energy....having the bookstore gal know who Mary Catherine Bateson is and finding her out of print book misplaced in the cultural anthropology section....buying a hemp purse and watching another dear friend get dizzy from the incense in the store....eating a spinach quesadilla "at the bar"....remembering it all; going to the eye doctor for my son (having another dear friend watch my daughter so I can be fully present) and finding out he does not have a brain or eye tumor but rather has been "over analyzing the blood vessels in the back of his retina"...he is focusing on how his eye works rather than what his eye sees....going to this ice cream shop for the first ice cream of the season....feeding goats and buying pansies; going to the library and stumbling upon a mother/son team giving a poetry reading...check out their stuff--http://www.coolheadluke.com/.

Tomorrow, art classes at the local art museum and book club in the evening...spring is about emergence and I feel my soul stretching toward the sun. Vacation will allow you to write sentences like that.