Let's Take a Vacation

Close your eyes and come with me....Really - close your eyes.

I'm renting a car because I don't want to worry about putting too many miles on mine. Plus no signs of car seats or kids when you rent a car. No cereal on the seat. No spilled milk stain.

The top is down when I pick you up. I hop out because I'm a much better passenger. You're driving. I'm settling in. My feet hang out the window and you make fun of my purple toenail polish. We have plenty of snacks for our ride. Sunflower seeds, licorice, starburst jelly belly's and ice cold ... lemonade. We also have an ipod full of our favorite music. Pink, Indigo Girls, Brandie, Michelle, Garrison. I even brought some older stuff like James Taylor and Little River Band and we only know the chorus'. We're singing at the top of our lungs and you laugh at me every time I get it wrong - which is often.

We're headed toward the ocean up North. It's supposed to be cooler up there and my skin is craving that lotioned feeling without lotion. As we get closer we bring out the blankets. We'll keep the top down because we haven't had this kind of air on our faces in far too long. My feet come back in the car and the heater is on under our legs. It feels so good to be this far away.

We're driving up the mountain with the ocean below us. My hair is a mess but yours looks great. It's cold but beautiful. I smell pine and you smell salt. The house we're renting is just right up the hill. I'm almost sad to get there because the drive has been so nice. "We could keep driving...", I think to myself. But that would spoil the party and we're meeting friends. Lots of them. Some we've never met in person. But after this long, we know so much about each other that's it's going to feel like home - like there's no real distance between our desert and their water.

We pull up to the house. We've only seen it in pictures. It's bigger than you thought. It's kind of a cabin but you call it a cottage. There are rocks building a moat around it. Safe, for sure. There are decks up high with lounge chairs that you sink into. I can't wait to get up there and look down at the ocean. The air is wet and the sun is setting.

I run ahead so I can pick the best bedroom. Again, you laugh at me. I just want to be sure I get a west facing window. You don't care what kind of bedroom you get - just that we made it safely and you can now have a real lemonade. We're the first one's there so we decide to play that game where we guess everyone's bra size as they come. We'll ask them their size later and I'll win. I always win that game.

We'll spend days and nights here. We'll only leave for cell phone service, liquor and maybe a souvenir sweatshirt. & by the time it's time to go, we'll cry because this is the first time & the last time I'll see many of you. But it was worth it, right? We build these kinds of friendships because they hold us safely when walls are thin and tides are high. They hold us safely when words are too heavy and thoughts too shy to share with anyone else.

I don't want to go home yet but you say we have to. There are children and spouse's and mortgages waiting. Dogs to be fed, lawns to be mowed.

And blogs to be written.