Several months ago my friend Jill asked me, “When was your last vacation?”
“I came to see you in the summer,” I replied.
“That doesn’t count. All of our recent visits have been about processing our divorce.”
When I mentioned the camping trip I took with the kids she howled with laughter. “Camping or any trip with your kids is not a vacation Corbin. I’m talking about relaxing and remembering how it is to just be. Any trip that involves extended family members or any responsibilities or obligatory commitments to work or people is not a vacation.”
“Oh, well then I’ve probably never had a vacation. Or if I did, it was over ten years ago.”
“That’s horrifying.”
Jill’s horror proved to be contagious, as well as motivational in making a promise to myself to take a real vacation sometime this year. But then money, my tendency to become overwhelmed with options, my fear and loathing of sites such as expedia.com, and the age old question, “Who can I stand to be around for nine days?” prevented me from actually planning any trips.
Although I have reoccurring fantasies about sitting Buddha like under a tree, I always told myself I would do that when the kids were older and my business was more stable. But shooing this fantasy away like an unwanted solicitor knocking on my door at dinnertime was becoming harder and harder. It started to linger for days and would be followed by the “what if ‘later’ never comes?” fear. I still didn’t see any viable options of how to make it a reality, but I also knew if I waited ten more years I wouldn’t even know what a tree looked like, much less how to sit peacefully under one.
One dreary, rainy Monday my boyfriend called to say he was fantasizing about going away with me.
“You mean for a long weekend?” I asked.
“No,” he laughed, “I mean a real vacation. You have to get away for at least a week to remember how to relax. Could you do that?”
“Emotionally or logistically?”
“Both.”
“Let me think about it.”
A quick glance at my calendar showed logistically I could get away for a week, but I knew that was the easy part. How I would pay for such a trip and who would watch the kids were also hurdles I knew I could surmount, the real question was could I leave my home, my kids, my friends and all of my other safety nets to be alone with this man, who I had only been dating for a few months and had yet to spend more than twenty four hours with? Could I remember what it was like to just be or would I feel like a trapped animal? Could I relax? Do I know how to relax?
I didn’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I knew I needed to find out so I called him later that day to say yes, I wanted a vacation.
The following day he sent me an email stating he had approval from his boss to take a week off, two options of when to do so, and three ideas of places to stay. “You asked for it, you shall receive it,” the email ended.
After decades of being (yet not enjoying) the planner and organizer, it was a huge relief to have someone do it for me. I picked the last week of May to visit Puerto Rico and logged on to expedia to book our tickets. I curbed any fear about how we would get along or the potential of me becoming untethered without my safety nets by telling him, “I fully expect to get grumpy at times and maybe even withdraw and I need that to be ok. I know we’re going on a romantic vacation, but I can’t be expected to skip and frolic in the waves all of the time.”
“I don’t expect you to be perfect, I only expect you to be you,” he said.
Once we had that established, I couldn’t wait to get on the plane.
Having low expectations works wonders for me and as soon as I got on the plane, I became another person. I was relaxed, I went with the flow, I was happy. Nothing fazed me, not the two-hour delay sitting on the tarmac, the coughing, wheezing, deliriously sick man next to me (who was also my travel companion for the next ten days), nor the inability to find a comfortable sleeping position for our ten-hour red eye flights.
After a day or so, my boyfriend commented on how different I was. “I know,” I giggled. “It’s as if I gave myself a lobotomy, but in a good way.” Hours would pass where all I did was sit under a tree and stare at the ocean. I can’t recall the last time I sat for ten minutes without doing something, even if it was think about all the things I should do. I slept soundly through the night, even amidst the perpetual “coqui, coqui” sound of the tiny frogs. I laughed, I played, and I stayed in the moment. One night my boyfriend asked me what my goals were for the following year. “Normally, I would love that question, but being present is so rare for me, I don’t want to ruin it. We can talk about that when we get back to Seattle.”
I was so proud of myself you would have thought I spent the week running marathons and writing books, where in actuality I did nothing. And that is a huge accomplishment. Upon returning home, I found out how difficult it was to remain under the tree. Whenever I expressed my dismay about this, most people laughed at me and told me I wasn’t being realistic. “Life is about doing crap you don’t want to do,” they’d say. “If you’re lucky you get to go on vacation now and then.”
I knew I couldn’t spend all day being lobotomized now that I was back, but I also knew I was unwilling to go back to the frenzied, non-present state I had been living in for over a decade. I didn’t know how to balance the two worlds, so I asked my sages. Marcie, sage #1, said, “I think the key is to do less.” Ann, sage #2, said, “Buy a hammock and spend as much time in it as possible.” Boyfriend, sage #3 said, “trust that the feeling will come back to you at unexpected times, but it can’t be forced.” Jill, age #4, said, “Don’t let another decade go by before you go on vacation again.”
For my first week back the kids and I ate whatever stale, somewhat edible food we had in the house. I ignored the moldy laundry piling up, the weeds that took over my yard while I was away, and the 170 emails in my inbox and opted to try to be present with them instead. Although I own a hammock, I used some liberties in substituting my couch, floor, and bed to recline in whenever possible. At times, I found myself truly listening to my kids, rather than fixating on the fact that we were late for something, and in those unexpected moments, I was back under the tree.
These occurrences somewhat reassure me that I don’t necessarily have to leave town to regain the sitting under a tree feeling, but just to be sure, I’m looking into some plane tickets for fall. My only criteria for the destination is that it be warm and have at least one available tree.

Corbin Lewars is the author of Creating a Life: The memoir of a writer and mom in the making, which was nominated for the 2011 PNBA and Washington State book awards. Her essays have been featured in over twenty-five publications including Mothering and Hip Mama. She has been a writing coach and instructor for over fifteen years and currently sees clients in the old Carnegie Library Building in Ballard. Contact her for details.