Since I was a young girl, my mother was always pouring her energy into her work. She took her jobs seriously, and never allowed herself long stretches of unemployment. She also rarely took vacations, for what reason I never asked. I can remember only a few times in the last ten or twenty years that she let herself go someplace purely for pleasure. Most of her trips seemed to have a purpose, some event or conference that was enough of a draw to get her to travel. I think it was a church event that got her to Atlanta several years ago, and a conference of some sort that convinced her to go to Boston a few years before that. I think the only purely self-indulgent trips she has taken in my recent memory were up to Seattle and Victoria, BC almost a decade ago, a Thanksgiving drive out here to see me when I first moved into the Park, and the time a year later that I kidnapped her and drove her to Colorado to see her granddaughters. She finally retired from her job a few months after that last trip, but for the life of me, I can't recall her really taking any time since then to travel just for the sake of being someplace different.
Until now.
She hadn't flown in years, since several changes of the security procedures ago. She spent the last two weeks emailing, calling, and FaceTiming with me, asking me about the rules for flying, with electronics in carry-on luggage, shoes on or off, and whether she could take a tube of toothpaste if it was half-empty. (As for that last part, Denver International Airport decided that a full-sized tube with a half of a squirt of toothpaste left in it was a dangerous item, and confiscated it from my man as he tried to fly a few years ago, so assume that there is no allowance for common sense in the TSA. For that matter, they took away a frozen cheesecake from my old business partner, on the grounds that it would thaw, and thus become a gel, which is to them essentially a liquid. Really. I'm not kidding.) Mom was preparing to go meet up with some of her far-flung friends who share common interests, at a spa and resort in the Arizona desert somewhere. Even knowing she was going to a spa, she hesitated to sign up for any of the services available at a place like that. She really had to have a serious nudge to pamper herself with a rejuvenating facial. I know if I had gone, it would have been massages and mud baths day and night. I suppose I'm a bit more of a hedonist than she is. Her trip was ending this afternoon, so tomorrow I will be asking for a full account of the play time with the girls.
I asked her to send me pictures of the spa, of anything she wanted me to post here. The grounds looked lovely, and she seemed to enjoy having a big marshmallow of a bed and a patio off of her room. There were little sculptures of ravens all around the place, and they made me want to write a piece of fiction, but it just has not yet started to flow. I may be able to get something from it once I get the review during the week. So far all they make me think of is "crows for the crones." I like that premise. I hope it turns into something.
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