Traveling to the River

Have you ever really wanted to run away?  I mean as an adult, legitimately pack up your house, put it on the market, hop in your car and leave for destination unknown? I think we all have at one point in time.  Biggest problem I see with this ‘Great Escape’ is not surviving the months of the sluggish housing market, but rather facing the fact that we have to take ourselves along with us wherever we go. Too bad we can’t leave the memories, hurts, angers, or fears in the house for the real estate agent to ditch along with the outdated bathrooms and linoleum counter tops.

The longer we live, the more we see those suckers are permanently attached to us - which is probably the reason I am still here in my living room and not lounging about on the Riviera. Well, that and a lack of an abundant cash flow.  Anyways, we deal with our wounds in such creative ways. We try to shop them away sometimes.  Ignoring them is an option – but that usually brings its good friend Neurosis along for the ride. Wine works … until the headaches and weight gain beg a new diversion.

Yet, in the early morning I still plot the escape.  Some days the husband gets to go along.  Others not.  Always the German Shepherd goes along as he adores me so. Details of what to take with me are no longer important however.  Where to go is the main obsession and the travel options are vast.

Destination one: The quiet days of summer at Grandma’s house innocently stealing raspberries from the neighbor’s vines. They are watching of course but say nothing. We pick cherries, make jam and German coffee cakes in the morning and go on errands in the afternoon with grandpa. It is miraculous how he can hobble down the sidewalk pulling me on roller-skates with his cane while carrying the market basket brimming with supper’s treasures. I know what ‘special’ feels like here in this little town.

Maybe I’ll go to the lake?  Water Skiing with friends who kept the best secrets. Evening boat rides to thank the sun for her perfect day.  Cheese curds and Coors beer that is smuggled across the Colorado border. The chill of an evening walk down a sandy path on the way to the campfire. The sound of a symphony echoing through the tall pines that harmoniously competes with a choir of robins at sunset.

How about the ocean? Those perfect summer weeks when mom leaves her business hat at the airport and substitutes it with a multicolor wide brimmed chapeau that flops lazily in the late afternoon sea breeze. Her favorite toddler is at her feet making sandcastles, her beloved niece digging for sand crabs, and a book in her hand that never gets opened. A perfect melody of seagull’s croons overhead telling us there is nothing to do here but make memories.

Ah, such nice travels in my early morning easy chair. They lift a weight and loneliness known only to a mother whose child has left the nest. They take me back to a time when my knees still worked, my waistline was concave rather than convex and my life had not yet become a recurrent episode of the Twilight Zone. With a sigh I suspect these wonderful memory trips have become a place of sanctuary that allows me to make peace with the past – or at least reduce the dregs in the bottom of my bottle so they stop choking me.

Time to travel for us all I suspect.  Life’s been a bit heavy as of late. The whole idea of happily ever after fairy tales burned up with the witch’s broom years ago. Freddy Krueger has escaped from hell and is walking the streets of our world with as assault rifle.  Facebook posts of those whose political penchants differ from ours brings up the ugliest reactions that makes our evil twin looks like a saint. We are Black and Blue over the assaults on whose lives matter the most. We all need to take a trip. How about to the river? Sounds good to me….

“As I went down in the river to pray

Studying about that good ol' way

And who shall wear the starry crown?

Good Lord show me the way

O sinners, let's go down

Let's go down, come on down

O sinners, let's go down

Down in the river to pray”