Vacation-I am really going!

I cannot believe this, but I am actually getting to go on a short vacation at the end of April-a 4 day weekend in Seattle!  I am SO excited about this, for a variety of reasons.  The friend with whom I am staying had airline miles, so she generously used them to purchase my ticket; I fly out on Thursday night, fly back home on Monday afternoon.

I went to part of Jr. High and all of high school there.  Not actually IN Seattle, but in Kent, which is about 20 miles south.  I lived in the area for several years after high school, too, and in many ways it is still home.  I haven't been back for almost three years; not for lack of desire, but for lack of readiness.  My closest friend died tehn, and I went back to her funeral, and haven't been able to muster up the emotional strength and energy to make it back there until now.  Even now, there are a lot of reasons why it will be hard to go back; the logistics alone are not easy, as there are four kids here at home to find care for, and of course two of the four are lobbying hard to be left home alone (which is totally NOT happenening)-so it would be and has been very esy for me to use them and lack of money as an excuse to not go.  However, I let her make the reservations, knowing that once I was committed, I would find the ways and means to go, and that has already occurred.  The $$ part is ok, and the kids already have a plalce to stay.  So-I am going.

It will be good.  To go somewhere for four days with no kids is really not somethingI do; last time I left them with someone else, it was a disaster of major proportions, so I am nervous (but they won't be taken care of by the same person, BTW!) about that part of it.  At the same time, I am really excited to get to go somewhere alone, to do thing I want to do, see the people I want and need to see.  We are going to the cemetary where Angie was buried-I haven't seen it since the funeral, so haven't seen the headstone or anything, and I am-well, looking forward to it is not the right phrase, but I think I need to.  Also, Camille is inviting those people I want or feel obligated to see over for a dinner, so I can get it all out of the way at once and not feel like I have to run from hoome to home in order to not hurt anyone's feelings.  What a relief! 

And I am excited to see Camille; she is one of those people whose lifestyle is SO different than mine that it is always a surprise to people that we are friends; hell, I am still surprised by it at times!  But under the surface, we are just two women who have both worked really hard to get where we are, on a personal level as well as a professional one.  We have so many ideas in common that the differences don't matter as much.  The funny (as in odd, not "ha ha") thing is that we have known each other since high school, were both good friends of Angie's, but WE weren't friends.  Not until Ang was in the hospital those last two months did we even really talk, and in doing so (until all hours of the morning at times), found out how much we had missed by choosing to remain distant from each other all those years.  So it will be so lovely to be with her, to drink coffee at Starbucks (and BTW, I loved Starbucks LONG before it was the trendy place it is now) and to go to Saltwater Park and smell the ocean, to take long walks and to just BE.  She is one of the few people I know who I can be quiet with and it doesn't matter.

More than anything, I am looking forward to just being ME.  To doing what feels good and nourishing to me and to my soul.  Part of it is facing my fears about going back, about confronting the grief of losing someone so dear.  I have dealt with it these past three years by NOT dealing, and I think it will be healing for me to go see all that reminds me of her.  And it does feel like going home, all of it does.  I feel like I spend an awful lot of time surviving that it is sometimes hard to just live, to enjoy the moment and remember how much beauty there really is in the world.  This will be a good reminder for me, on SO many levels.