Simmering and Savoring the Soul of Vacation

Unpacked, if not entirely put away; rid, with a shower, of the coating film from airports and busses and the scent of travel; and a few groceries restored to the pantry, we are beginning to unfold into home.  There were a few telephone calls to make, Barrington to pick up, dinner to prepare (a salad recipe we brought home from Italy), one camera disk of pictures to enjoy, and then, we could delay it no longer, sleep.  

Saturday had begun with an alarm in Montefollonico, followed by a taxi ride to Chiusi, followed by a train trip to Florence, followed by a cab ride from the train station to the airport, followed by a flight to Amsterdam, followed by a shuttle bus ride to the hotel, followed by dinner and a little sleep.  Yesterday (actually, Saturday night, Des Moines time) began with an early alarm, a shuttle bus ride back to the airport, re-checking luggage, a long flight to Detroit, Customs, re-checking luggage, a shorter flight to Des Moines, and home.  

And now the next morning, earlier than I had intended to wake, I am only beginning to negotiate the transition.  Already I hear the demands of ordinary life scratching at the doors and windows of my consciousness, though we won't actually open those doors until tomorrow.  But I'm not at all ready to put away the suitcases and allow the vacation to end.  My mental context -- as well as my body clock -- is still Italian.  Somewhere inside I'm still cloistered within those medieval walls, walking those brick paved roads, hypnotized by the rolling hillsides, and awed by the rows of hanging fruit.  Still I am responding "Grazie" to niceties tendered and greeting strangers with "Buon giorno" and "bueno sera." My system, two weeks surrounded by enchantment and nourished by discovery and blessedly stretched by the unfamiliar, is still set for absorbing and drinking in; it hardly feels capable of pouring out again at work.  

But my sense is that vacation is less about escape, and more about the creation of protected space in which to allow basic, holy practices and values -- sedimented by the routine of every day -- to re-emerge.  Things like rest; like curiosity; like paying naive attention to one's surroundings ; like listening to unfamiliar voices and noticing unfamiliar practices; like learning something new and being vulnerable to the strange; like playing and laughing and intentionally putting oneself in the company of different people, and not needing to be correct -- all of which can just as well happen here as there.

The task, then, is not to close the book on this vacation and go back to work until the next one; it isn't to turn off the stove of these past two weeks and put away the pans, but rather to savor, and simmer, and gradually season whatever is fresh, whatever is available, whatever is endemic to the immediate environment, allowing the soul of vacation to enliven the forms of routine.  

Bene.