Scott and I flew to Phoenix for a friend’s wedding last weekend. It was a short trip, less than 48 hours.
My friend Ali was getting married. I hadn’t seen her since she pulled up stakes and moved to Phoenix and fell in love, so it was a good excuse to see her, and to foist the children off onto someone else for a little while.
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We stayed at a lovely resort. We slept in, we found someone to make us some omelettes, we moseyed down to the pool.
Camelback Mountain loomed above us, and we could see the occasional person at the top, ambitious souls who braved scorpions and rattlesnakes and two hours of sweaty effort in order to enjoy the view. It crossed my mind briefly that it might be fun to hike up there, but it would have required me to give up my lounge chair, which I had positioned just so.
It was so much easier just to close my eyes and rest for a while. Besides, I would have also had to put down my drink.
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At the wedding on Saturday night, everyone asked us what we'd done in Phoenix while we were there. We looked at each other and shrugged.
“Um, hung out at the pool?” we said.
Everyone wore the same expression when they heard this, a tilt of the head, a slight furrow of the brow. “Oh,” they'd say, drawing the sound out in three syllables: oh-oh-oh, the way you might when you hear a friend has Strep.
Even on the plane, the guy next to me asked if we’d done anything while we were there, like a Jeep tour or golf or something.
I told him that we had not.
He wore that same expression.
“Oh-oh-oh,” he said. “Maybe next time.” As though the weekend had been a huge disappointment.
But there is nothing disappointing about sitting on a lounge chair by a pool, under a clear blue sky at the foot of a scrubby mountain and having someone who’s paid to be nice to you supply you with drinks. None—count ‘em—none of the children there were ours. No one asked me for a cookie or toast or water or popcorn or paperclips (NO! NOT THE SMALL ONES! THE BIG PAPERCLIPS!). No one pooped in their pants. No one had therapy or swim lessons or school or a birthday party. We didn’t hear the Map song from Dora one single time.
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As we drove to the airport, I realized that we didn’t take a single picture during our weekend. Not at the pool, not of the two of us dressed up and free of the incidental gunk and goo that comes with taking care of two children. Not of Ali and me, not of the ceremony, nothing.
Well, not exactly nothing. I did take these:
Hey, what's up. You gonna eat that?
Quoth the raven, "The omelette station is awesome."
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In the cab from the airport, I calculated what we owed our sitter on my iPhone.
I stared at the total for a moment, and then showed it to Scott.
“Wow,” he said.
We were silent for a few moments, watching the Chicago skyline get larger through the windshield of the cab.
“Worth every penny,” I said.
Scott gave a thoughtful nod.
“Every single one,” he said.
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