The first vacation
In May, we visited Watch Hill, Rhode Island, a remote, chic, put-it-on-a-Taylor-Swift album beach town, for our first real vacation since the pandemic began. I booked our trip after a full day of work and a full bottle of wine on a cold night in March. It was all a bit impulsive – I knew very little, except the drive would be three hours and the hotel was refundable until two weeks before, which was key. We all learned to set our expectations low. Everything good has been tethered to a question mark.
But spring arrived, and people got vaccinated. Numbers improved. Places reopened. We kicked our family’s daycare colds just in time for our trip to actually happen. Brushing dust off the shoulders of our nicest outfits, we packed the car and drove.
Before this, we never went anywhere for no particular reason. Our trips were always for business with a bonus day tacked on the end, or a wedding with friends we don’t see very often, squeezing three years of catch-up into one evening and a hungover brunch. The destination and anything we’d enjoy there came second to our obligations. But Rhode Island was just because.
The weather was a gift: unseasonably warm with a refreshing breeze. We dropped off our bags and walked to the beach in our clothes. We’d never done that before. If the sun wasn’t strong enough for a solid tan, we’d never waste the time. We’d just keep moving, and dining, and shopping, and consuming. Instead, we sat. I read a book in two days.
We ate oysters on a crowded deck. Then, we ordered a dozen more. I couldn’t remember the last time I enjoyed something enough to order more. Even if I did, I never had the time. But we had nowhere to be, no one’s agenda to stick to. We just waited, and it was worth it.
We got drunk – fun drunk. Not a finger too many of the same bottle of bourbon that kept refilling itself last winter, posing as an antidote to our trauma but filling our conscience with guilt. A drunk that started with white wine and ended in laughter, where everything felt lighter and lighter.
We watched the sunset with strangers. A couple just arrived from Connecticut who has small children like us. The husbands switched rocking chairs, and I sat close to his wife, closer than I’d sat to a random person in a long time. She confided in me about having a baby during a pandemic, mourning her former life in the city, and feeling like an outsider in a new town. I told her some of that never changes but some of it will. She could have been anyone, and it would have felt like I knew her.
Then, we ate again. We ordered a Domino’s thin crust to our hotel room and ate the whole thing in bed, like we were in college. Half pepperoni, half mushroom, even though 15 years later, our tastes have changed.
I saw a friend. She is a colleague from two former employers, actually, but we’ve grown up as lawyers and been through a lot together. She left Brooklyn for Rhode Island in the middle of the pandemic with her fiancé and two dogs, something she swore she’d never do. But the move suited her. We hugged, and I cried a little, telling her how happy I was to see her at peace.
I didn’t feel bad about my kids, or work, or how my kids affect my work or how my work affects my kids. I committed to being out of office, not just “out of office,” and away from our girls in a way that felt spacious and healthy. Back when I only saw them an hour on weekdays, my vacations never felt deserved unless we spent them together. But even they’d admit, this time, it was nice to have us gone.
On the morning of our departure, we went back down to the beach. We walked left until we could barely see the hotel, staring out into what felt endless, instead of an end. We picked smooth rocks for our daughters and carried them in our pockets. I breathed and digested something other than dread. For the first time in a while, it seemed normal was possible. But it wasn’t normal – it was better.
Share with me a wonderful memory from your first post-pandemic vacation. I may just do something with them: averagejoelle3@gmail.com.
The little things
Behold, one of the small details inside The Breakers that blew me away. Cornelius Vanderbilt commissioned the Italian Renaissance-style palazzo (i.e., mega-mansion) in Newport, Rhode Island, in the late 1800s. I remember hearing that he only could enjoy this “summer home” for one season in good health, thereby birthing the term, YOLO.
I was not expecting to feel so inspired by this style of design, but the details were just breathtaking, particularly in the bedrooms. Floral wallpaper that matched the linens and sconces with a pop of something special. It’s a vibe, for sure.
Also
As some women rush towards their post-pandemic glow up, others reckon with who they saw in the mirror. The New Yorker captured the space between the two.