“Vacation”

With Chris’ six day per week, 10-14 hours per day schedule, and my working while Nora sleeps, we are on a completely different schedule from most everyone else.  We stay up late and wear pajama’s until 10…or 11.  We go out for breakfast more than dinner.  Saturday’s and Sunday’s don’t mean much to us; our days off occur while most everyone else is working, on days most other people don’t think much about.  And, in the rare, rare opportunity that we have Chris home two days in a row?  We feel like we’ve won the lottery.

Early last week, Chris told his boss that he was taking an extra day off and taking a mini-vacation right in the middle of the week.  Nora and I were excited to have him home for more than a few hours, and Chris was just excited to be out of the kitchen so we decided to take advantage of the warm weather:  we loaded up the wagon, hiked into out favorite picnic spot and spread out for a feast.

Just last week, Nora was reminded of one of the great joys of summer:bare feet.  And now all she wants to do is run around barefoot.  At first I thought about playing the worried mom, telling her there were rocks, worring that she might cut her feet on a stray piece of glass, thinking about how dirty she would get…but then I remembered how magical it is to kick up dust with your heels and feel grass between your toes, and I stopped caring about dirt and rocks and instead joined her, dancing together in the fields.

We had a lot of fun that afternoon, exploring in the sunshine, inspecting new things and loving each other’s company. Just three or four hours out of an unexpected family day, and it felt like a vacation.