Room to Breathe

I don’t believe every day is a new adventure, and I don’t believe every moment is bliss. Most of life is getting through it: waiting, and damage control. Take the vacation we just got back from. It was bliss in a lot of ways, and it covered two weeks of the fifty-two. Add a few long weekends and a week in Spokane, and you’ve still got a year that’s mostly Tuesdays. Even the vacation wasn’t wall-to-wall rapture. Most of it was settled before we left: whom we’d visit, where we’d sleep, how we’d get from A to B, which sights deserved our admiration. Bliss with a spreadsheet is still bliss, but it’s a nervous sort. The best moments were the ones we hadn’t written down. On Achill Island, I asked the man at a little coffee truck whether Keem Bay was worth the drive. He assured me it was. It was. The best part of the day was something we’d never planned, recommended by a stranger who was busy making a latte. After Strandhill, we stumbled into Sligo. It’s the biggest town around, a small city…