Time to Get Away
This letter appears in the June 2021 issue of Lake Norman CURRENTS.
For so many years, my weekends have been filled with “to-do’s.” I must go to the grocery store. I have to get to my kids’ sporting events. I absolutely must clean the house. A Target run is essential. All those things I couldn’t quite get to during the week because of work and weekday activities would be pushed off until the weekend. Before I knew it, the entire weekend would have been filled up with me running around from place to place only to collapse, exhausted, on Sunday evening wondering how it was already time to get back to work the next day.
Looking back, I wish I had organized my time better (I’m still having issues with this.) I wish we could have taken more spur-of-the-moment weekend trips with our kids, but it always seemed just out of reach. Now that they are older, jobs and friends and other responsibilities make coordinating all four of us going somewhere at the same time a logistical nightmare.
It all makes me a little sad, but I’ve tried to develop a new perspective on the concept of a weekend getaway. Last fall, my husband Daniel and I decided to take a weekend just for us and try to celebrate our 20-year-wedding anniversary (COVID put a stop to the tropical vacation we had planned last summer). We were nervous, since we still in the middle of the pandemic, but we decided to go to Charleston, S.C., since it was only a few hours away and we knew the city was taking the protocols seriously. Things were definitely a little different—we had to make restaurant reservations well in advance because only so many tables could be served each night and the inn we stayed at removed the morning continental breakfast and afternoon snacks. We spent as much time as possible outdoors, strolling the streets, visiting the beach and at my request, taking an evening ghost tour through the city (we were all masked which made things seem even more eerie). We returned from our trip refreshed and glad we had taken the time for ourselves instead of making excuses as to why we shouldn’t go. We also recently took a day trip to Greenville, S.C., and again, before we left, I started listing off all the reasons I should probably stay home. Then I started worrying that the pandemic had turned me into quite the homebody, so into the car we went. Once we arrived in the city and walked through the gorgeous Falls Park on the Reedy and spent the afternoon exploring, I knew we had made the right decision.
I encourage you to plan your own getaway, whether it’s a trip to one of the nearby vineyards for the day or a longer weekend trip to the beach and the mountains. It’s good for the soul, and as we’ve all learned in the past year, we’ve still got a lot of living to do.