Gualala Hideaway

Over the last several months, I’d spent considerable hours planning for homeschooling my kids in the Fall.  I’d made purchases.  I’d planned lessons.  I’d wrestled with decisions and pinned the outcomes to the mat.  I had done all I could do and was in desperate need of rest.

My need for rest serendipitously fell on the same weekend that my husband and I were offered a condo in Gualala, California.

Maybe you’re like me:  A mom-of-many with a busy schedule that doesn’t allow for too many days off,  but who really could use a weekend away.  If that’s you, and you haven’t recently been given a luxury condo in which you could stay free of charge, then I pray that these next photos and words would help to carry you away into another world where you – at least temporarily – could find an escape from the never-ending, so-important, thank-God-you’re-there blessing that is Motherhood.

I arrive at a luxurious oceanfront condominium with views of the waves crashing just outside the windows.  Nothing needs to be cleaned.  There are no surfaces that have been absentmindedly smothered in papers and trinkets.  When I enter, the only sound I hear is the ocean and then, soon, my incessant yammering.

I take a stroll along the paths winding down to the ocean, and I will not even one time do a head count to be sure I’ve not lost a child in the shrubs.  When I leave the condo, I only have to be responsible for my own shoes.

I explore the beach with all the wonderment of a child without having to police the wonderment of any children.  Nobody is burying anyone and the only person asking how long ’til lunch is me.

I get lost in my thoughts staring at the waves, because I don’t have to worry about anyone getting sucked in by one of them.

I sit with my husband after dinner and have nothing else to do but set up a tripod that I found in the closet downstairs so that I could see if I could take a good shot with low light.  No kids jump into the shot at the last second.

I can sleep in as late as I want, but I don’t want to sleep in for fear of missing even one moment of this I-Don’t-Have-To-Make-Anyone-A-Sandwich weekend.