Friday, May 30, 2008

Retreating


I whined to Leslie several weeks ago that I had nothing to look forward to. It wasn’t hard to figure out that what I want the most is quiet time with Himself and so it seemed my will to live was contingent on a brief getaway with my beloved. Today’s the day and it will begin as soon as Nick the dentist is through with him and we hit the road. It was suggested that Ojai or Santa Barbara would be preferable but we are headed to a budget cabin in Frazier Park. I have not visited these mountains since I attended Girl Scout Camp Lakota in what must have been 1964. We slept, I remember, in cots under pine and oak trees. Previously, I’d had an awareness of being Jewish but I wasn’t sure what it meant, if anything. I didn’t go off to Sunday church services with the other girls. A girl in my group noted my absence by remarking, “I could never be friends with a Jew,” and then I knew that it meant something but I was all the more confounded as to what.


The sprats are staying with the Smiths in the nice part of Glendale and I have arranged for after school transport, put their medications in carefully labeled bags and made sure that they packed clean underwear. Even though it is only two nights and they are big boys it is hard to leave them. My every instinct is to hold on to them and keep them close but sometimes I become so weary and brittle that I am repellant to them. I pray that the time away will render me better fit and I will not turn into Ilse She-Wolf of the S.S. on Monday when I wait in line with my beloved sons at the Sprint store to replace two phones, one lost, one broken.


I am afraid to make myself look forward to things and I do not know if my life has been more or less filled with disappointment than the average one. But, I have conditioned myself to under-expect. We have a bit of food and some books and our sweatpants. The children are safe and with grown ups we all like and trust. Ana is holding down the fort and beasts at Casamurphy. I am hoping for a peaceful quiet time and a break from what Leslie calls my loud life. I leave here with all my usual trepidations about leaving and also counting my blessings. I feel enormous gratitude for the loved ones who help me survive this place and make me feel loved and ease my doubts. Two days away is not very long, but not just for me, for those at my side too, I hope I am better when I return. Feel love.

Shabbat shalom. Namaste.

1 comment:

John L. Murphy / "Fionnchú" said...

Is this the Frazier Park, former home of Exene or John Doe post-split, that we drove hurriedly through, or another one? Hard to tell, but look at that handball court and that water tower! Thanks for a great weekend getaway on what turned out to be a suburban cul-de-sac rather than a mountainy fastness, but it beat hearing the jackhammers pounding away our street. xxx me