My Happy Place

My husband and I stole 12 hours away from the rest of the world.

In a cheesy little Super 8 motel in a town about 45 minutes away, in the middle of the stark, mud-spattered Alberta spring, we shut the door on the motel room and effectively locked out real life. Our children, our mortgage, our commitments, our preoccuptations - shut out for a half a day. 

Not long enough to find respite and renewal. Just long enough to remember how much I love him and how much we take each other for granted.

For several sweet, uniterrupted, savoury hours all that existed was our love for one another, a bag a Lay's Ripple Chips and a container of Herb & Garlic dip. 

Pathetic?

Heavenly.

So we laid in the dark, by the glow of a PBS special and didn't think about deadlines, jobs, children and stressors.  We retreated to the sheets, exhuasted and emotional, ready to break apart at the seams and spill out, beaten down from working 'life' so hard.

We turned down the volume and said very little. We didn't talk about family. Work or bills.  We nibbled and made small talk, each offering to let the other control the remote, both wanting to connect and heal and remember who we are... together.

We stared into each other's eyes like heart-sick lovers.  

Daily moments of reality collect like dust on the fireplace mantle. Layer after layer of annoying, persistant, troublesome reality builds until you can't see what's underneath.  Until you can't remember what's hidden under all that dust or why you ever thought it was beautiful in the first place.

Everyday stuff piles up. We both get wrapped up in the 'not-important but necessary' or the 'urgent and important' or the 'important and necessary but not urgent' details of life.  We pass each other in the hallway or at the front door. We forget to say 'thank you' and 'you matter to me'. We silently criticize each others habits and patterns and lose patience with each other. We forget we hit for the same team.

Our days roll into weeks and then months pass by. We know we need time away. We know we need to re-connect and re-focus.  We know we need to spend time alone, but it's hard to do.  The intent is always good. Date night once a week.  Date night once a month.  Maybe two nights away somewhere, if we're lucky. But challenges in schedules, finances and children always ensue and soon another year of our life together has passed in a blur.

But once in a while, we make it work. The door gets locked and the world gets turned away and for a few fleeting hours he is all that exists with me. And we lock together, inseparable.

We're passionate and ageless.

We become every line to every love song that has ever moved me to tears and every scene of every love-story that has ever made my heart ache. And he tells me I am everything he's ever dreamed of and I fall apart, overwhelmed by the love I feel for one man. We ask each other for forgiveness and promise not to let so many little things get in between us.

We shared breakfast together. Greasy hashbrowns and heavy pancakes, holding hands in between sips of terrible coffee and felt ridiculously crazy-in-love.

And who would've ever known that with this man that makes me absolutely undeniably crazy; that I take forgranted and 'put on the back-burner;' that I forget to thank for all the little things, who is reliable and completely accountable to me and our children I would have discovered my happy place.

Under the sheets by television light in the corner room of the Super 8.

My. Happy. Place.