Why I can't write tonight
I can’t write tonight, even though I told my family I was going into my office to meditate and write, because I have to find an Airbnb where we can spend the night when we visit the sleep away camp my daughter is visiting this summer.
She has separation anxiety, and had a traumatic experience at her last sleep away camp (“never again,” she told us), but this camp looks compelling enough (SO MUCH ART) that she’s willing to try it; our hope is that by visiting in advance, with us, she’ll feel more comfortable there when the time comes.
I have reloaded Google Maps approximately 37 times, each time in a different configuration, trying to pinpoint the perfect place to plan our overnight. The camp is three hours away, which for us will mean four hours, because we pee constantly. Is there a cute town nearby? What if I zoom out on the map? Zoom in? Slide left? Right? I google “Delaware River Gap” and then realize that no, the area I’m looking at is more like the Poconos….
I finally crack it: We’ll spend the weekend with friends who kinda sorta live on the way, then Sunday night at an Airbnb on a lake near camp, then the camp tour on Monday (the school year will be over by then)… perfect! But wait, our friends’ daughter now has a dress rehearsal that weekend, and two recitals, not one, so we wouldn’t really get to see them, so visiting them is out. So then we’d rather visit the camp on Saturday than on Monday, so we want to move our Airbnb reservation up by a night.
But the Airbnb on the lake is booked Saturday, and Friday, so I’m pulling up Google Maps again. “Cute towns near Scranton, PA.” (Thoughts of The Office fill my head…) I find a town that looks charming, it would be fun to walk around and explore. But there are no Airbnbs in the town, or near the town, or within 10 miles of the town, at least none that meet our specifications (two bedrooms, A/C…not shitty…) I look at hotels: the Comfort Inn and Hampton Inn get the highest marks. Isn’t there something local and full of charm?! Maybe on a lake, or with a lovely pool? No? I decide a hotel is out; honestly, they skeeve me out, anyway, what with your inability to open the windows and all the hair and skin flakes in the carpet and linens, and the risk of bed bugs, and….
I can’t write, tonight, because I’m apparently a travel agent. A creative, steely-willed, emotionally attuned travel agent who tries to project herself into the experience of Future Her and Future Her Husband and Future Her Daughter and think about what will make every single person as happy as possible and create joyous memories and so on and so forth.
Because no matter how many times my husband tells me that their happiness is not my responsibility, I have some kind of hero complex, some ridiculous ego that says, “I WILL CONQUER THIS CHALLENGE! For the good of the order!”
Because I don’t like it when they aren’t happy, because then I’m not happy.
Because I don’t like discomfort.
Meditating and writing — the things I’m supposed to be doing, the things I said I was going into my office to do — help. They create feelings of spaciousness and help me process my feelings.
So I pull up VRBO, because maybe they will have options that Airbnb did not.
Epilogue: I eventually wrote (this). And then I meditated. And then I fell asleep.
