On Being Lost

We loaded the kids into the bateau de route yesterday and just drove. Both The Man and I needed to get away from these walls, this place, and all the emotions that we've been trying to deal with. So with a packet of biscuits and some bottles of water, the six of us ran away.

We took random turns, through random villages, amazed that in the 6 years we've lived in the little village on the hill, we had never gone those ways before. It was if our route was matching that of our souls: a little lost, a little confused, but with a rough idea of where we were.

Somehow we found ourselves at the start of a small trail with some picnic tables overlooking the plains below. We all piled out of car, had a snack and listened as the wind howled around us, cracking dry brittle tree limbs that were waving above us. We decided to follow the trail for a bit, the kids running ahead, The Man and I next to each other, walking wounded, as it were.

The trail split and without thinking, I recalled out loud a Robert Frost quote from my childhood, one that hung on a giant banner in the front hallway of my elementary school:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

So that's what we did.

We found ourselves tumbling out into a high meadow, just us and the wind. The Man and I lay down and as we held each other's hands, our love & our life, in the forms of our children, ran and climbed all over us.