It’s only a queen, the same size we have at home.  But at home our bed typically holds some combination of 1-3 dogs, two cats and two daughters.  Many nights when Bob comes upstairs he clings to the very edge, sleeping like a bird on a perch while I cling to the opposite side.  Some nights he surrenders all together and I wake to dog breath on the pillow beside me and he’s curled up on the floor.  In the past he might have retreated to the guest bedroom, but that’s now occupied by Corey.   I’ve learned the trick  to gain adequate bed space is to head up around 7pm, before anyone else can get there first.  He’s still working on that lesson.

But not this morning.  Today, we’ve left all critters, offspring, charges and responsibilities behind us.  We’ve gone on a trip.

….Five miles down the road.

…To our AirBnB apartment above the cafe.

It’s Bob’s birthday, and we’ve decided to venture out of our home for some getaway time alone together.  

“We need to stay at the BnB to make sure everything’s in working order,” he reports to the kids.  

“We’ll be working on some repairs down there,” he tells Mom and Dad.

He’s full of shit.

It’s been a year and a half since we’ve spent a night away from home, and we’ve forgotten that it may actually be within our rights to do so.  We cloak our guilt with these insane suggestions that it’s a work-related mission.

We just want to be alone together, to remember who we were when we were just us, before we built this world around us, before our vows to each other became a marriage to this way of life, before this pandemic turned our three-generation family into a a seven-member pod (add the dogs and cats and that makes a 13 member pod…And that’s before anyone gets out to the barn).

We didn’t suffer the loneliness that so many others suffered over the past year.  We kept good company with each other, sharing meals, cooking, cleaning, chores and lots of conversation.  

But that upside has its downside.  Bob and I surrendered our intimacy — Never a night away, never an un-rushed private moment to ourselves.  Even our daily treks into the woods to drink our morning coffee were dominated by dogs on laps and leashes, tongues in our faces, sticks shoved into our hands, and lots and lots of panting and barking.

This bed is a grand silence.  We’re holding mugs of coffee, staring out at the creek and the winding narrow valley between the hillsides.  No one is calling, growling, pawing, hissing, wedging their way between us.

Even with our vaccinations, we couldn’t bring ourselves to travel farther than West Fulton for our holiday.  But it suffices.  The views from the apartment windows are different from the views at home.  The birding from the second floor porch is phenomenal.  And truly, there is little more we want than just this moment to hold hands, to connect with each other, leg to leg, arm to arm.

We talk about birds, about our friends, about the kids, about our future plans.  We eat foods we don’t indulge in at home:  lobster, bagels, ice cream.  We watch the light on the mountains and treetops, then venture out to hike the nearby trails and witness them through traveler’s eyes, stopping every ten feet to photograph those sites we forget to see in our daily hurries.

Come nightfall, we settle beside each other on the couch to watch movies, hand in hand.  We are in love, here for each other, wanting nothing more.

That’s when Saoirse’s text blips in.

“The dogs are missing you guys!”

We’re flooded with panic.  The dogs are missing?

We stop everything and video-call home.  The girls are in the kitchen making dinner, wondering how they could possibly ruin spaghetti.  We can see dog tails passing behind them on the screen and realize we mis-interpreted their message.  The dogs are fine.  They just miss us.

“Swiss cheese tastes terrible on spaghetti,” Ula reports.

Saoirse stabs a forkful and holds a thick rod of gluey starch up to the screen when Ula’s back is turned. “She forgot to add olive oil to the pot when she boiled the pasta,” she whispers.

“And I’m pretty sure the sauce has gone bad,” Ula brings her dish to the kitchen table and stares at it with a broken-hearted gaze. 

“The sauce isn’t bad,” Saoirse admonishes her.

“Then you just wrecked it,” Ula responds.  

And that moment of just five minutes prior, of not wanting more, vanishes.  We want those kids.  We want those annoying dogs.  We want to feed them, hug them, share our space with them.  

“I have leftover lobster,” I tell them.  “You could come down here and have that for dinner!”

“No!” Saoirse insists.  “We’re not barging in on your vacation!”

But I want to reach through that screen and bring them into the room with us.  Bob must feel the same way.  “It’s no trouble,” he says.  “Just c’mon down.”

And a few minutes later, our daughters are at the door.  They bring one dog, our littlest, Dusky Doodles, because they said she was too heart-broken in my absence.  She scrambles into my lap, instantly content.  And then our kids are in the kitchen, feasting on our leftovers, then cuddled on the couch with us.

And there’s a lot less room once more.  But Bob and I still hold hands.  And we know that tomorrow we will go home, back to the work, back to the dogs, the cats, the crowded bed, the endless cooking and cleaning.  And we know that this vacation has shown us just what we needed to see: that we’d choose this all over again… and again… and again.

Folks, I’m thrilled to announce that my newest book, Redefining Rich: achieving true wealth with small business, side hustles and smart living, will be launching through BenBella Books this August. Toward that end, I’d like to enlist your help. We are looking to put together a launch team of volunteers who can help promote it. If you’re interested in joining, details are at the top of the blog page at sapbush.com but basically, you’ll 

• Pre-order a copy of the book
• Fill out our launch team form, which is found at the top of the sapbush.com blog;
• Promote the book through your social media channels
• Request the book at your local bookstore and library
• Leave a review wherever the book was purchased

But WAIT!  It gets better!  As an expression of my thanks, here’s what you will receive in return:

• A 15% discount code for anything in the online store at sapbushfarmstore.com, good through July 31, 2021
• A free digital chapter from the book in advance of the release date
• Entry into a giveaway for a signed copy of the book and a throw blanket from my store
• Official graphics for sharing on social media
• An invite to an exclusive virtual book club meeting so I can answer any questions you may have once you’ve received your copy. Note: Book club sessions will be limited to ten participants per session to ensure everyone has a chance to talk — we will keep adding on additional sessions until every launch team members who wants one can get it.  So, everyone get’s a chance to have an intimate hang (bring coffee or cockails, depdending on the time), and we’ll have a lot of fun together.  So please sign up – just go to sapbush.com, click on the blog, and the details are at the top.This podcast happens with the support of my patrons on Patreon.  And this week I’d like to send a shout out to my patrons Tatiana Larson and Tanya Dixon.Thank you, folks!  I couldn’t do it without you!  If you’d like to help support my work, you can do so for as little as $1/month by hopping over to Patreon and looking up Shannon Hayes.