Where Do You Go To When It's Time To Escape?

I have been having a bit of a writing block lately.  I have a lot of stories and recipes to share but sometimes, I hold my hands over the keyboard, ready, my mind whirling with the most eloquent words about to pour from my mind through my keyboard onto the screen, and then...

"Mommy!  I peepee!"

"Mommy!  Chokit Mook! (Chocolate Milk for those uninitiated into toddler-speak).  Poshe (Toddler-speak for Prosze which is Please in Polish)!"

"Hi, Mommy, did you see what the weather is yet so we can go play outside together?"

"Mommy!  Outside!  Play!"

Or, the conversations with my husband that can never seem to wait until I am done writing and, honestly, just aren't important.  Yes, that's right, they aren't.

And then the wonderful idea falls out of my ears like invisible ghosts blown away by a breeze.  Gone.

Playing outside, a mountain of laundry, cloth diapers, another attempt at writing during snack time interrupted by little fingers needing washing, "tea party", a run to the store for the milk that seems to disappear faster than I can make a cup of coffee.  By the time nap time comes, I have no idea what to write about at all.  And by then, the rest of the day requires attention.  Dinner, cleaning, school paperwork or supplies or volunteer hours, baths, story time, bedtime, and by the time my own bedtime comes, I am done.  D-O-N-E.  I don't want to talk or think about anything.  Let alone blog.

So, where do I go when it's time to escape?

I would say my blog.  Writing.  Reading.  Or if I just can't get more than 2 or 3 minutes for that, I close my eyes and pretend I'm somewhere else.

With my children.

At the end of a long car ride filled with listening to Bach and Chopin watching red fields and towering churches and villages and poppy flowers fly by my vision.

Taking me to the side of a mountain. 

I smell smoke from a chimney.  Grass and animals under the sun.

Stalks of wild grass and wheat bending and bowing.  The Pole, the fields.

I hear the sound of the forest near me, the breeze blowing through the leaves.  Whispering.  Ancient sounds that move me Come, walk in our shade on this path that countless others have travelled.

Past the kiln used by the villagers in the glen below for many many years before and now, just a solitary relic.  Standing, watching, remembering what was.

The scent of pine needles and tree leaves decaying.  Mushrooms preparing for their next appearance.

My belly filled with kabanosy, real hearty bread, plums, tomatoes, butter. 

Walking, just walking.

On the side of a mountain.  Outside a village that hardly anyone has ever heard of outside my family and the villagers below.  And I want to keep it that way.

Or, perhaps...

I close my eyes and visit Wroclaw.

Sometimes, it's harder to visit there in my imagination.  But during labor (natural labor both times, once induced for multiple hours with no pain medication), I closed my eyes and pretended that it wasn't happening to me.  I was on that mountain.  I was in the Rynek.  I was not there. 

Until I was holding my babies for the first time and looking into their eyes and the world melted away.  The ony thing in the world at that moment was my children in my arms for the first time. 

The trees could have been whispering on that mountain, knowing that I promise to return.