We are Not on Vacation, or Other Misconceptions One Has

We are not on vacation.

We are not on holiday.

We don’t even know what that means.

By definition, a vacation would be a time to toss off cares and obligations. Going home means shouldering them. A vacation includes the amicable faces of strangers in uniform, and the addition of blender drinks (thanks Coffee Catz!) arriving with a delicious promptness. This does NOT happen at home.

Going home means getting in the car, bleary eyed, after being up for twenty-four hours, and having your god-sister there to pick you up — her latest ‘not-boyfriend’ in tow. You’re to Check Him Out. You’re to Pay Attention. There May Be A Quiz. Never mind that you’re starving and barely coherent. She wanted to be the first person to see you for a reason. Focus, why don’t you?

Going home means that friends of your mother call friends of yours and say, “Do you think she’d mind singing for services this weekend?” Mind you, no one has said, “Do you think she’s getting up to go? No, no, no. Perhaps one doesn’t go to services when one is on vacation. When one is home, one gets up at the appointed hour, properly attired, to meet the Divine Appointment. Please. Do not make this mistake again.

Vacations indicate hours of silence — or noise — as one chooses, but most of all, the absence of telephones, unless one wants them, and of blessed speechlessness. Not so when one is home. When one is home Importunate Acquaintances phone around until they find out where you are staying. They Leave Messages. They call your friends and prise out information like your cell number from them. Your friends sheepishly call and apologize. You quietly consider making them ex-friends.

Not vacation. Not holiday. Home. Where people who haven’t clapped eyes on you in years insist that you must make time for a meal with them simply because you’re on U.S. soil. Home, where you haven’t seen your parents or anyone related to you for four days now, but you’ve seen scores of acquaintances, and near strangers. Home, which detests a vacuum and tries to suck you back in as if you haven’t missed a beat. Home. Where the heart — and the obligations — are.

Home. When it isn’t annoying, it’s mostly good to be here.

So, the book hit U.S. bookstores this week, and I’m feeling a heady mix of horror and dread. I’ve read through half of the thing and I’m already wanting to go through with a pencil and question word choices and complain about the previous edits — what if it doesn’t make as much sense now? Ugh. I know you’re supposed to ‘love your babies’ once they come out, blah, blah, blah, but I have no kids, thus no experience with that unconditional love thing. It’s …only okay. Which is horrible to say, but there you have it. My saving grace is Ira Glass, the fabulous NPR guy who started at nineteen with NPR (the lucky duck) and who says (in section two) that even stories he reported from two years ago kind of …suck. You have to keep producing, acknowledging the craptastic nature of the stuff that comes out only by moving forward. You know that great art and literature is within you — transcendent stuff — but it doesn’t emerge immediately, and will only be unearthed by dragging out all of what is on top of it. You know you can do better. You will. Things rarely come out the way you envision them.

Keep writing anyway.