Tuesday, October 5, 2010

beach magic


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For my birthday, Nate promised to take me away. Monday morning we made our escape. Over to the coast (of course). it's ironic that while Nate is working from home, I feel like we hardly see each other. i take that back. we see each other. but we rarely take time to really be together. (we're working to change that). life has been big and busy (I feel like I always say that); nate has been understandably consumed with work. and i just sort of go about my duties, trying to be cheerful, sometimes only able to muster neutral-but-at-least-i'm-not-grouchy, (with occasional emotional confessions about how it's hard.) in light of all that, this getaway was incredibly rejuvenating. it was so, so pleasant to spend two solid days with my husband and remember how much i completely adore him. i wanted two more at least (days together). maybe two dozen. i didn't even really miss the children. is that terrible to admit? there wasn't a whiff of fancy or exotic, but we had the best time. we walked the beach 'til the sides of our calves ached. we talked about many, many things - how to prepare our children for the realities of life, how to help them be financially responsible, our thoughts/feelings about plastic surgery and the hyper-sexualization of women, things we can do to encourage creativity in our home, our ideal selves and our progress towards them. I told him how my heart reaches out after children - how I am falling in love with Henry's class, all eighteen of them. And how often I find myself thinking about how we can extend the warmth and love of our home to the children outside of it. (when we're talking about all these juicy things i wonder about the fascinating things other couples talk about when they're alone -- do you ever wonder about that?) Then I got really, really hungry. So we chased out the hunger with some Italian food. (Funny little side note: Sunday night my dad slipped Nate some cash and said, "Take her somewhere nice for dinner. You know, like somewhere with placemats." Dad, if you're reading this (I know you're not) there were placemats. We laughed about the placemat comment, but I get a little verklempt when my dad does sweet things like that. I just appreciate it. Very much.)
After dinner, we walked along the harbor and watched the fishing boats come in as the sun went down. We held hands. We talked about the biblical account of Jesus telling his disciples to drop their nets once more after a day of unfruitful fishing - and the parallels in our own life. We sat down on a bench and kissed. And shared Nate's jacket when the evening got chilly enough to make our noses run. We headed back up to the hotel and watched House Hunters on HGTV - i love that show - (and kissed during all the commercials.) We woke up to the ocean, which is one of the top ten best things possible in life. We watched the waves and chatted about the day. We ate blueberry pancakes (Nate) and French Toast (me) at Mattie's and crooned about how much we love that little place. How it feels like a wrinkle in time, how darling all the white-haired couples are and how neat it is that the waitresses know their names and their orders by heart.
We stood on the shore of the Smith River and commented to each other about the goodness of God and the beauty of His world. We pushed a gigantic log into the ocean (Nate's idea - of course) and then laughed and laughed when the log knocked Nate's feet out from under him and rolled him up in a big wave. We stopped laughing when we discovered the log incident rendered his iPhone useless. darn. we stopped at a road-side flower farm and laughed about how the sign said "Sweet Cron" but I thought it said "Sweet Corn" and kept wondering where all the corn was?? (I think maybe it was supposed to say corn, what the heck is cron?) We shared fish and chips for lunch and Nate choked down an oyster shooter. (shudder!) We stopped by the candy shop and bought some pop rocks and nerds to take home to the littles.

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we played with the camera's self-timer feature

then we drove home, fetched the (grouchy) children from my mom's house, brushed their teeth, smooched 'em up good and sent them to bed.

Nate's back in his office - a business call. I can hear the muffled hum of financial chatter. I'm ignoring laundry and half-packed bags. I miss him. I miss this weekend. I'm so glad we went. I just e.mailed him, "thanks a million for the getaway," I said. And also, "where should we go next? and when?" He suggested a cabin, somewhere snowy, this winter...


I think that sounds just about right.

7 comments:

  1. beautifully written, Em. And I must say when my husband and I got back last month from our overnight getaway, I was ready to leave again five minutes after we picked up our cranky over-tired kids. :-) I love my little monsters, but boy it was nice to be alone with my husband.

    ps...it was so nice to read what you said about going about your daily duties with occasional confessions about it being too hard. I will be fine for a month, then I'll have a tearful breakdown for a few hours about how hard it is and how dull and grey everything looks. And then I'm fine again. So it was really nice to know that I'm not the only one who has those times, and then picks it up and goes again. thank you for sharing that.

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  2. I think getaways are SO GOOD for the marriage soul. Mark and I went away overnight a couple months ago and it was SO, SO, SO fun. The funnest part was bashing around the golf course playing 9 holes in a golf cart! We felt like kids again. Free of worry and responsibility. We even each got a Snickers for the ride! Now my goal is to plan a 5 day getaway (I think 5 days will be mine and the kids limit). I will admit, I actually missed Lucy since she was just a "baby" still. Maybe 7 months. But I think once they're older for some reason you don't feel so sad about leaving them with grandma. I feel sad for couples who don't want to leave their kids for some alone time. It is so rejuvenating.

    But I don't have to tell you this... sounds like your 2 days away was magic! And sounds like you and Nate have very similar conversations to Mark and I. And this comment is long. So happy you and Nate got to go away! What you guys are doing is hard work.

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  3. Try putting the iphone in a bag of rice to dry it out. It's worked for others I know.

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  4. Divine. I'm so jealous that Nate was willing to pose for the self-timer on the camera. Roy hates having his picture taken. (Neither do I, for that matter...) I think the last time Roy and I got away, just the two of us, was about.....three years ago? Huh. Thanks for the reminder!

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  5. Emily, I'm so glad you & Nate had such a wonderful time. I love you both - what a wonderful couple you are!

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  6. sounds so perfect to me right now...

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  7. That sounded so lovely! I think I'm going to look on the internet right this second to book a little get away of our own. :) Thanks for sharing, you and nat e are so wonderful!!!

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