Last Friday, my mom pulled up to my driveway for our trip.
It was raining, she couldn’t come inside because my baby was getting over COVID, and I had just thrown my spare tire (which needs to be replaced) in the back of my 4Runner because it was just laying on the floor of the garage.
Twenty minutes before she arrived, I had run to my storage unit to check for an old DVD player, failed to find one, gotten gas, and stormed through Harris Teeter in eight minutes to get our groceries for the weekend.
We were headed to a weekend getaway in Fancy Gap, Virginia—close enough to not spend all day driving, but deep enough into the Blue Ridge Mountains that we felt completely isolated with seven acres of land and 600 feet of mountain stream at our luxurious Airbnb rental.
And that was the point of this trip. I had given this trip to my mom as a Christmas gift after the hardest period of our lives, which had been full of tragedy and trauma already. October through December were brutal after losing my brother, and January proved to be even harder for me (which I didn’t think possible) because my kids were out of school 24 days out of the month, my whole family caught COVID, and I was in the middle of a remodel at a rental property that had already blew past our timeline and budget.
January had been extremely busy for my mom, as well, just not quite as bad because she wasn’t sick and home with two babies during the same point. But we are both business owners, as you may remember, and it always seems like clients and team members can tell when you’re about to go on vacation—everything drops on you at once. It’s never easy to leave.
As we left, I had to spend the first our on the phone with a house cleaner, a trash removal company, and a new handyman who were all at my rental property trying to prepare it for a guest that was arriving the next day. The person who had remodeled my bathroom completely left the job unfinished. Not only that, but the plumbing he had done was wrong and the water didn’t get hot in the shower, the tub faucet leaked, and the handle just fell onto the tub when I touched it.
It was pouring rain and I was trying to coordinate with all these people to get the house ready for the next guests, while somehow simultaneously starting a trip that was about decompression.
We made it up the mountain and to our cabin. It wasn’t a cabin, it was a brand new luxurious home with way more space than my mom and I needed. But this trip was about just that: space.
Space to kick back and relax. Space to spread out and snack all weekend. Space to mourn. Space to think. And space to just be, without being needed.
The wifi was basically nonexistent so that helped with all of those.
For the next two days, we cooked and ate. We watched a whole season of “Ted Lasso” and three parts of our favorite miniseries, “Lonesome Dove” (we’re saving the saddest part for another time). We walked down to the mountain stream even though it was 15 degrees outside. And the best part was convincing my mom to go out in that temperature and get into the hot tub on the porch.
She’d never been in a hot tub during cold weather and it’s totally different experience from beach hot tubs. We sat right there in 100 degree water but 20 degree weather, watching the sunset.
It was quick, but needed. Me not having any kids crying and her not having any clients calling.
We talked about life now that there’s just two of us left in our family and how grateful we are that I’ve added two more members in the past three years.
Life has changed.
And also a lot is still the same. Because it goes on. But if we don’t take the time to find space—and sometimes that means forcing space to happen—then all those little stresses will eventually creep up and add up, insidious as they are, and start cracking our foundation.
Self care is everything. But you have to work even harder to do it.
We got back a little earlier than anticipated, so I brought my mom over to my house to show her the bathroom remodel (as a real estate agent, she loves that stuff). While we were there, we also stopped by the guest apartment next door.
There was a note on the toilet from the weekend’s guest saying that it wasn’t working.
And so it goes.
Rain Bennett is a two-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker, writer, and competitive storyteller with over a decade of experience producing documentary films that focus on health and wellness. His mission is simple: to make the world happier and healthier by sharing stories of change.
You can read the rest of “Right as Rain” here, and check back every Wednesday on Chapelboro for a new column!
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