On the luxury of escape
Reflections on taking a vacation.
Editor’s note: As I continue to explore where to direct my energies with writing, this month, I felt compelled to work on something different, so today you get a personal essay, sans shopping. Content warning: motherhood, death, politics.
Cabopino, Costa del Sol. I’m eating pizza on la playa overlooking the Alboran Sea. Wind thrashes at our tent, which is staked on the beach behind me. Zipped inside, my infant son plays under the dozy eye of his dad, unbothered by the chaotic flapping all around them. There’s sand in my copa de sangria, swirling like cinnamon around a wedge of orange. Oh that? I think. That’s just una ofrenda from Mother Earth, sprinkled on top of the final stop in our vacation. I suck tomato sauce from my fingertips as another whip of sea air sends waves of sand rippling over my blanket. The cool undercurrent casts the sun’s warmth away with ease, and I have to laugh at the shiver that crawls over me. We can always go back. We will, in fact, go back, after we’ve had enough of this.
I stand up, shake off, curl my toes. First I’ll go comb for conchas. I drain my plastic cup except for the ice chips, then peek through the tent window to check on my family. My chest aches at the sight of them: the boy babbling away while his father reclines along his side, one arm stretched protectively around him. The back of my son’s head is a fuzzy little peach that could fit in the palm of his dad’s hand. I’m awed that he exists—this soft, fleshy baby that we seemingly plucked from nothing. And yet here he is, cradled in the cove of his father’s body, shielded from the bluster of this beautiful beach where we brought him.
Maybe it’s the sangria sinking in, but I take my leave without interrupting them. Instead, I make my way to a small crag of rocks—a roped off spot where fragments of sea glass and textured shell shards will surely have collected. I poke about the shallow pools, periodically lifting my head to squint back at our pop-up shelter, now a fluttering speck in the foreground of this white-washed marina town. Beyond rows of lounge-chairs and straw-thatched quitasols lie the amiable chiringuitos of Cabopino, and farther still, the 4-star restaurants and vacation rentals, the Sierra Nieves and the cloud-strewn sky. And here am I—a woman, a mother—blissfully, luxuriously alone. But isn’t that the allure of travel, really: the promise of anonymity, and putting miles between you and your reality, if only for just a moment? I suppose if you’re “doing it right” you’re also connecting with locals, having conversations, and soaking in the universality of being human. But more often it’s just you and your traveling companions, your poorly executed “por favors” and fumbled “para llevars” and sipping sangrias in watchful silence.
The pizza was the result of such a mixup: a margarita pie was meant to be a salt-rimmed libation, but as my husband says, his Spanish starts and ends with “muy bien.” Of course we just rolled with it, as has been our general approach to this trip. Keep it loose, follow the baby’s lead, go from tapas to tapas to helado and repeat, take afternoon naps under bridges and jacaranda blossoms, eat the accidentally ordered pizza on the beach.
My hands are full now. I try to snatch one last cockle that tumbles in with the tide, but let five or six others slip from my grasp in the process. Surely Mother Nature is making fun of my silliness—this ridiculous need I have to take a piece with me. “Okay, enough,” I say. “You win.” With sea air pulling tears from my eyes, I return to our camp and dump my small loot onto one corner of the blanket. Every inch of my skin is prickled with goosebumps and gray with grit. It’s cold, and I’m ready to go home. Beside me, the tent trembles as if in agreement.
Suddenly, I’m overcome with the urge to be buried. I sit. Scooping slowly, I start rubbing sand into my thighs and shins. I try to cover my arms next. The sensation is warm and joyous, and I’m laughing again. Is this some absurd attempt to cleanse my sins?
All we wanted was to see the world anew. To admire the mosaic of human creation down to the tiniest hand-painted tile. To pass reverently through community patios—beneath Mediterranean blue geranium pots and balconies billowing with kalanchoe—and observe up close the opening of a well-tended rose. To find hope in the steady flow of ancient aqueducts, and marvel at the endurance of beauty despite the cracks that show. To delight in the simplicity of sitting in the sunshine and sleeping with a full belly, as only a happy child can do.
And oh, how baby Joel obliged! He looked as we pointed at pigeons and Picassos, parted his lips to oily mouthfuls of eel and fideua and laughed at the camareros who whistled brightly for his amusement. And wherever we were, the minute he got blinky-eyed, I’d pull him to my breast and feel his body slacken, lulled into his own private siesta by the rhythm of us breathing each other in—out—in.
So it was earlier that day when Gregg went to find food. I stayed behind in the beach tent to nurse the babe—the two of us a tangle of sweat and milk and sand and limbs—until finally he went limp in my arms. He slept heavily then, sighing beneath the controlled breeze of a portable fan, oblivious to the walls caving in, to the attack of the wind—gust after gust shaking us, hissing “Wake up!”
I wake up stateside again. We’ve been back for five days. The baby sleeps to the ebb and flow of his sound machine, set to “Ocean.” I scroll my phone while I wait to nurse him, swiping away headline after headline that keeps sliding in. Tents bombed in Rafah. Bodies burning alive. Child decapitated.
“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”
— James Baldwin
Don’t look away.
Links below to actions we can take, and some additional words and art that feels relevant in this moment:
Take action:
Protest, and support protestors.
Spread awareness. Contact your reps. (USCPR action alerts and toolkits)
Amplify Palestinian voices. (Operation Olive Branch)
Learn more. (I read Palestine, the eye-opening graphic novel by Joe Sacco, back in college, which I highly recommend for historical context. Over the years, the journalist has published multiple detailed, illustrated accounts of the conflict in Gaza through interviews with the people at the heart of it.)
“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.”
— Arundhati Roy
Read: “No idols” by Haley Nahman, an essay about the limitations of using platforms for protest.
Follow: Black Liturgies, for thoughts on anger, grief, and resistance. (And purchase the book by Cole Arthur Riley.)
Listen: Fiona Apple’s “Relay” has been rattling around in my head. Relevant for evil at every scale.