I am breathing a sigh of relief. After traveling off and on for nearly three months, my husband Chuck and I are home the rest of the summer. No trips abroad, no city vacations, no professional conferences. These days, I can actually work a regular schedule, rather than squeeze my writing and editing chores into off hours at airports and in hotel rooms.
While overnights aren’t on my agenda anytime soon, everyone needs an occasional break from their daily routine – no matter how satisfying. To this end, I am an enthusiastic proponent of what I call “vacation excerpts.” A vacation excerpt is a short, jam-packed representation of any experience that makes a long getaway so memorable. Here are some examples of what I mean:
An ocean lunch in the middle of a workday. I dined on very rare tuna and hushpuppies with a friend at the Oceanic Restaurant in Wrightsville Beach on Tuesday. I was tired of editing, bored with writing and fed-up with email. Simply put, I needed an excerpt.
So my friend and I pretended we were on vacation, surrounded by young couples with kids, ladies in straw hats and pastel Lilly Pulitzer ensembles and a group of rootin’-tootin’ senior citizens who kept sampling each other’s seafood. In true vacation style, we bypassed the rice pilaf that came with our meals and ordered French fries instead.
A fast game of digital cards. Long afternoons of pinochle and hearts have been a favorite vacation pastime as long as I can remember. When I crave an excerpt, I save the file I’m laboring over, click on one of my Big Fish Solitaire icons and have at it. If I close my eyes, talk to myself and laugh at my own jokes, I could swear I’m in Nags Head playing 500 with my husband, sister and brother-in-law.
A big batch of gorp. Gorp is a confection of M&M’s, cocktail peanuts and raisins. We mixed up giant bowls of the stuff on the many family vacations we spent in Nags Head. Every night, we munched and crunched until only a few stray raisins remained. In fact, vacation week was the one time of year we adults allowed our kids to stuff themselves with junk till they turned green.
Now, a few handfuls of grownup gorp – M&M’s with smoked almonds and dried cranberries – still spark memories of salt and sweet and warm blue ocean.
A drive in the country at dusk. In Wilmington, North Carolina, back roads are never very far away. When summer’s at its hottest, my husband Chuck and I will hop into the car after dinner, wind down the windows and head toward Burgaw and thereabouts. The feel of warm, damp air in my face, the strangely pleasing scent of Confederate jasmine laced with fertilizer and shrill canine barks mellowed by distance bring me back to childhood, when Sunday drives were our only vacations.
So, there they are – my favorite vacation excerpts. My guess would be that other folks wouldn’t find it too difficult to come up with a few of their own. One thing I know for sure, I couldn’t get by without indulging in an occasional excerpt. My deadlines may not go away – but for an hour or so, I sure do.
