My parents have a sign hanging by the coat rack: “Still on vacation”
They got it, I believe, some time after they moved permanently to Door County, WI and now that I am also a permanent resident I can see the truth and for me — a still working, non-retired human — the danger.
The first year my parents were here full-time they had loads of visitors all coming up to vacation and stay with them. But that vacation mentality is actually difficult to sustain — the drinking and cutting loose, etc. Eventually you have to step out of that vacation mode, even if those around you are in it, and just live your life.
I am too new here to have any semblance of routine. My life has not been organized yet. Hell, I don’t even have my moving truck full of my stuff here. And even though I’m working during the weekdays and handling post-move logistics in-between, there is still an aire of vacation. Or maybe that’s just summer? Or maybe . . . just being home? Not having that sinking feeling lurking in my gut that I have to leave a place that makes me so, so happy.
My brother and sister-in-law are with us for the next week, on a genunine vacation, and I have to remind myself and them that I have the weekend (i.e. if we’re drinking, we’re doing so tonight not on a weeknight…).
But a life of pitting cherry pits by the lake and keeping my mom company while she makes pie; going on a tractor ride up and down the road, walking over from my place in the morning because it is so close to my parents’. . . maybe I still am on vacation. May it be a long one.
With Love,
Natalie