A Vacation Was Had by One and All

Okay, I finally have my caffeine-induced wits about me enough to tell you about our AWESOME vacation! Here's the thing about vacations - they're a good thing to take! Note to self: take one with spouse more than every 10 years. We went to Vegas for 3 days for our 10th anniversary, have had a night or two here and there since then, but have not been away for a whole week alone, for 18+ years. (Nine months exactly before Woohoo was born. Just sayin'.)

It's just a really nice thing to go away and remember why you ever thought getting married was such a hot idea to begin with. Thing is, I like STM. My love for him has never been in question, but it was really nice to just enjoy the heck out of his company. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but once you have kids, it's so hard to keep the focus from totally being on them, and then throw a special need or two (or 12) in there, and well, it's easy to become co-parents of a special needs child, and not much else.

Everyone keeps asking us what we did when we were in Maui. Here's the answer: a whole lot of nothing. We didn't go to "do," we went to "be." And "be" we did. We "be'd" at the beach, at the pool, on our balcony, on long walks and leisurely breakfasts. We did golf once (he golfed, I rode in the cart for an extra $35). We took nice drives around the island, did explore the other towns both near and far, but most of the time we just hung out.

STM read the Steve Jobs book cover-to-cover (it's a monster), and I read three paperbacks that were all wonderful. (Shanghai Girls, Secret Daughter, The Miracles of Prato. Put all three on your To Read list, and don't forget The Blood of Flowers, too.)

We slept 9 hours each night. We awoke before daybreak, got our coffee and sat on our balcony watching the sun come up. We had our beer and/or wine each evening at sunset and watched the glory of that. In a nutshell: pure heaven.

And the kids. The kids had a ball without us. Woohoo said, "No stress for a full week." Nobody asking her if she did this or that, nobody nagging. Somebody cooking sumptuous meals for her each night. Someone that let her take over our master bedroom and make it her own for a week. Someone that said, "Sure!" to whatever it was she wanted to do.

Rojo was blissed out, too. We only talked to him once for 2 seconds and had a couple of texts. He was too busy keeping our friend, liz, (you can call her the liz, but you can't capitalize her name) hopping. He had her going out for frozen yogurt, playing basketball in the living room while she played YouTube videos on her laptop to provide the appropriate accompanying music, listening to him play and sing church songs on the piano or keyboard, or just having "conversations."

When we got home it was 9:00 PM and we thought he was asleep. When we went up to check on him he was SOBBING in his bed. "Rojo, what's wrong?"

"This is liz's last day!" he said through his cracking, crying, voice.

I settled him down, went back to say goodbye to liz (and tell her how sad he was she was leaving), and when I went back he was crying even more - up out of his bed, pacing around the room frantically, in a total frenzy. "My heart is BROKEN," he said. "I have a sad life!"

Of course this tore me up inside and I couldn't sleep a wink that night, even after I saw he'd settled down and was sleeping peacefully. The next morning we discovered liz had left her cell phone charger at our house, so we dropped it off after school. Rojo didn't even want to get out of the car, I made him, he said his hello and goodbye and then was in a big hurry to get home and to the school yard before it got dark.

liz e-mailed me the next day, "If you're not lucky enough to be in the Rojo circle, you will never get why it makes total sense that he was crying his eyes out last night because I was leaving, but had absolutely no time for me today!" Exactly! Nothing personal! You were here, I was sad you left. I processed all that. I'm over it. No baggage. No attachment. In the present.

liz also wrote, "Oh, my hell of God... Rojo and I are even more solidly connected than before. I want everyone to love me the way he does... deeply, no strings... no agenda. Thanks for the opportunity to be with someone who touches my soul in a way that no one else ever could."

Thank you liz for being the perfect person to make it all possible. Rest up, Hawaii 2013 is already in the works (my 50th)!