Some people picture North Shore women as ‘ladies of leisure’- shopping and having fun. After 30 years in business I know that my neighbors work as hard as all women in America, except that most of them do not earn any salary. Most of them barely have time for manicures, pedicure is a luxury, and they are afraid of doing massages, thinking that they are depriving their families of money and their service. This I okay to have Me-time. I found a beautiful book which teaches women how to take care of themselves. The Escape which you will read has a symbolic meaning of freedom we all need, even if we are in love with our families and our spouses. Read it, please, and learn that taking care of yourselves is as important as taking care of others. God says “Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.” That gives you permission to love yourself first.
Escape
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Listen, Lord, please listen…
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Forgive me, but it’s so good to get away by myself. To have to think only about the clothes I’m going to take. To have to pack nobody’s suitcases but my own.
It’s even a relief to say good-bye to the family, disloyal as that sounds. For I know that you know how desperately I need to escape for a while, and that you’ll look after them. That in some ways they will be better off for my going.
Dear God, how good it is to board a plane and not feel guilty about taking the window seat. To read to myself, think my own thoughts, be myself for a change. To gather myself together as a person, blissfully a stranger among strangers, utterly on my own.
How good it is for me to have to see about luggage, taxis and all the other complexities of traveling without somebody else along. To register at a hotel and soak up the unaccustomed luxury. To go into dining rooms and choose what I want to eat. Or recklessly phone for room service (a mother earns it – after all the room service she gives at home).
Thank you for this vacation from demanding voices. From housekeeping and neighbors and telephones. From problems with husband, children, job.
You know I am glad I have them to go back to, God. But right now I am like a new person. Someone more attractive, self-reliant, more interesting even to myself, someone I need to reclaim.
Thank you for giving me this break, and please let every woman have one now and then. A chance to get away, to take a trip alone.
Marjorie Holmes “Who Am I, God?”
