Here are my belated New Years postings! It is very difficult to start a fresh, new, clean-slate, resolution-filled new year when you are smack dab in the middle of rehearsing a play. No time for breathing, no time for real reflection, no time for giving thanks.
Lee and I went up to Deep Creek like last year. We had been looking forward our magical fairy tale retreat for months where we could just be. No schedules, no responsibilities, no nothing except what we felt like doing. Then, an incredible gift landed in our laps: the chance to work on a show together, and not just any show, but an adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. However, this meant that our idyllic vacation was not as care-free as we hoped. We had started rehearsal mid December, and we had off for Christmas and our vacation. However, that meant I had to have all my lines memorized by the time we returned. With the director with me on vacation, I felt double pressure. The dread of work hanging over me clouded the relaxing I was trying to do. I couldn't recapture that beautiful zone of stillness that permeated vacation last time.
But I am getting ahead of myself. Day 1 of vacation started off with a family funeral. Lee's mom's best friend had died after a long battle with cancer. We went to be with them. It was my first real Jewish service of any kind and it was very different than I expected. More like a family prayer service, with a friend officiant than a mass. Prayers were said, people spoke. It was full, and sad, and sacred.
We went to a very cheesy and fun old movie themed diner in Towson for lunch, stopped back home to get something we forgot, and then were on the road again. We finally, one year after starting the book, finished the A Fault in Our Stars audiobook and cried.
It was a beautiful sunny drive up to Deep Creek, unlike last time which was full of ice and snow. We got rather expensive groceries from the store, and drove to our lovely house, which was only 100 feet from our little Whitetail cabin we loved last year. We shook our fists at the people who took our place. Lost Bearadise was nice, though! It was lit up and decorated for Christmas when we pulled up in the dark. Garlands, lights and a Christmas tree. It was a lot bigger than the Whitetail, with a basement and extra bedrooms. While the space was nice, I loved the forced proximity last year. We were never more than a room away from each other.
We unpacked and I tried to practice my violin (I had started violin lessons as part of my 30x30 a week before), but the pegs kept slipping and it wouldn't stay in tune. I became very frustrated because in addition to memorizing, I was supposed to practice at least 15 min a day.
After I gave up, we made a fire in the fire place on our first try (we are now the fire experts!), and Lee made tacos, and we watched Hogfather in honor of Christmas. I then memorized two scenes and Lee quizzed me (thank god for him). We then played Discworld, a new game, and probably the hardest game we had ever played. It was like Lords of Waterdeep, Flux and Smash Up all in one, and it was very frustrating.
I was upset after that. After a difficult violin lesson the day before, I felt like I was a beginner at everything. I am not good at making mistakes, even when I know I am just learning and I am not supposed to be an expert yet. That, and the pressure of memorizing keeping me semi-on alert and not able to relax made it a frustrating beginning to our vacation. I read Out Of the Easy before I went to bed, though, and it was a very good book.
Day two, I woke up feeling a bit better and showered. Lee made bacon, eggs and biscuits and we finished Hogfather. I did my accounts, which did not equal my bank balance and that stressed me out a little. I had less money than I thought. I sat out on the porch for a bit in the cold sunlight which was lovely. I began to make an art of blind photo taking, because the glare on my phone screen was proving difficult.
I took a walk with Lee, retracing my steps from my beautiful, quiet snow walk from last time and discovered a new view of the lake together. We came back, and I fixed tea, celery, cheese and chips and journaled for a little while. We then dipped into the hot tub and watched Goodfellas for a little while. While Lee cooked dinner, I practiced violin and got at least two of the pegs to stick in tune.
Dinner was steak, potatoes and carrots with wine and Murder on the Orient Express with a desert of strawberries dipped in chocolate.
I memorized one scene for an hour and 15 minutes and then Lee quizzed me. I tried to keep my freakout to a minimum, but I still freaked out. It didn't feel like a vacation because I was always worrying about the next thing. I felt like Lee was on this relaxing, romantic vacation and I couldn't join him.
Day 3, I woke up and ate breakfast while reading, and then sat out on the porch and watched the rain. Outside started to smell like skunk so I came back in.
We went to Firefly farms and got cheese and spicy peach jelly, and listened to songs as we drove home.
I went and took a bath with a pine-scented bath bomb, relaxing music and a nice book to try and get in a good place, but it felt like I was marinating in stress. I tried a face mask and journaling some more, but I was not in a good headspace, and I ended up crying for a while. I felt stressed, and then guilty I was stressed because I felt like I had payed $600 to go cry in the woods. Lee talked me off a ledge, though, and gave me permission not to memorize anymore until we got back from vacation, which helped a lot.
I watched him play video games for a bit to calm down, then we hot tubbed it with a glass of wine, and a crazy fire that would not stop smoking. We watched a bit of What a Girl Wants and then went to dinner at Dutch's at Silver Tree, which is like a super fancy American food restaurant. Like they have fried chicken, but the fanciest, best quality friend chicken you have ever seen. It was lovely. We came home and played Scrabble (thank you, Lee) and the Lords of Waterdeep expansion and then watched Ghostbusters til bedtime.
Day 4, I woke up, made breakfast, watched some TV and decided to go for a walk. The solo walk was such a gift last time, and so I wanted to have that feeling again: that kind of spiritual scrubdown. It was freezing and snowing, so I bundled up and set out to try to get close to the lake. After a little while, I saw the lake through the trees and stepped into a communal driveway to get a better view. A man who was emptying his trash asked if I was lost, and so I told him, I was just looking at the lake, since we didn't have view of it from our place. He generously allowed me to go through his back garden to see it up close!
It was like being in the Arctic. Like I was the only one for miles. The lake was pristine and frozen, with a foggy mountain in the distance and a rough sandy shoreline littered with driftwood and pockmarked with holes in the ice, and shards floating in the water like tectonic plates. Two old tree stumps had washed up on shore, and the one in the distance looked like a mammoth.
It was silent, clean, whole, like nothing could disturb it. My messy, spiraling angst was swallowed up in this vast, indifferent wilderness, like cacophony swallowed by one single pure note. I thanked God for such a beautiful gift, a touchstone for the year, like my snowy walk the year before.
As I walked back through the trees, I realized I never felt this peaceful anywhere else. I was almost to my house when I swear, I smelled incense burning, like at church. I stopped in my tracks and the trees rose around me like a cathedral. I wondered if the woods were my sacred home? I have been looking for one in my 30x30, but I always assumed I meant a church. What if it really was the silence of the woods. I am going to try to find a quiet place at home that I can visit regularly to try it out. A godswood, like in Game of Thrones.
After that, I came home, finished journalling now that I was in a better place, and sat with Lee while he played videogames. We played one round of Discworld, and then wanted to go out. We decided on bowling, but stopped in the driveway and decided to go for a walk to the lake instead. I showed Lee my frozen wilderness and we stood there for a while, drinking it in.
After that, we played LOWD expansion, ordered pizza, I called my mommy to catch up, and then we ate pizza and watched My Neighbor Totoro. We then went into the hot tub and talked for a long time about the future, careers, theater, everything.
Day 5, we packed up and went home.
It was not the fairy tale of last time, but it had some really good moments of peace and connection. I have learned that I can never take work with me on a vacation, no matter what the circumstances. It will be a priority for me in the future. And I have a place that I can go back to when things get difficult: the frozen lake in the middle of the woods.
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